Below are excerpts from a story by Paul Roderick Gregory, in Forbes, plus an examination of how desperate the website SkepticalScience seems to have become in the way they treat professionals.
Excerpts from Forbes:
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Three recent events have brought the controversy over climate science back into the news and onto my radar screen:
First, Ivar Giaever, the 1973 winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, resigned from the American Physical Society over his disagreement with its statement that “the evidence (on warming alarmism) is incontrovertible.” Instead, he writes that the evidence suggests that “the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this ‘warming’ period.”
Second, the editor of Remote Sensing resigned and disassociated himself from a skeptical paper co-authored by University of Alabama Climate Scientist Roy Spencer after an avalanche of criticism by “warmists.” His resignation brings to mind Phil Jones’ threat to “get rid of troublesome editors” (cited above).
Third, the New York Times and other major media are ridiculing Texas Governor Rick Perry for saying that global warming is “not proven.” Their message: Anyone who does not sign on to global warming alarmism is an ignorant hayseed and clearly not presidential material.
What lessons do I, as an economist, draw from these three events?
First: The Giaever story starkly disputes warmist claims of “inconvertible evidence.” Despite the press’s notable silence on such matters, there are a large number of prominent scientists with solid scholarly credentials who disagree with the IPCC-Central Committee. Those who claim “proven science” and “consensus” conveniently ignore such scientists.
…
Second: As someone with forty years experience with peer reviewed journals. I can testify that the Remote Sensing editor’s resignation and public discreditation of Spencer’s skeptical paper would be considered bizarre and unprofessional behavior in any other scholarly discipline.
…
Third: The media is tarring and feathering Rick Perry, we now see, for agreeing with Nobel laureate Giaever and a host of other prominent scientists. I guess if Perry is a know-nothing Texas hick (or worse, a pawn of Big Oil) so is every other scientist who dares to disagree with the IPCC Central Committee. Such intimidation chillingly makes politicians, public figures, and scientists fearful of deviating one inch from orthodoxy. They want to avoid Orwell’s “watching their comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes.” How many are willing to shoulder that burden?
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Read the entire piece here.
For a recent example of “watching their comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes” one needs to look no further than Dr. Roger Pielke’s attempt to have a dialog with the oxymoronically named website “SkepticalScience.com”. Bishop Hill described what happened there as self immolation, Shub Niggurath lists it as A dark day in the climate science debate.
Whatever is is, it’s the worst example of climate ugliness I’ve seen this month, though not the all time worst (see the “corrections” at the end). It is surprising though, that for a website that recently won the prestigious national Eureka award in Australia, that they’d have to stoop to this level of juvenile behavior reminiscent of Animal Farm, cited by Paul Roderick Gregory in his Forbes article.
Strikeout of opposing commentary, especially that of a professional scientist writing something that doesn’t even appear inflammatory or off topic (since he’s responding to another commenter), is so “grade school”.
Can you imagine the howling that would ensue if I did the same thing to NSIDC’s Walt Meier when he posts something here I might disagree with?
From my perspective, while I once said that John Cook was at least “civil in his discourse with me”, and for that reason I gave Skeptical Science a place on my blogroll. I’m rethinking that now after seeing this latest ugliness.
One thing Shub Niggurath said caught my eye:
More recently however, the tone at [SkepticalScience] has turned shrill. The main proprietor John Cook, who is a climate change communication award winner, apparently approves. These changes have especially been noticeable after a certain ‘dana1981′ – likely referring to the author being born in 1981, began his contributions to the website.
…
And to top it all, in their narrow and monomaniacal attempts at interpreting Roger Pielke Sr’s blog posts, the readers/moderators and authors including ‘dana1981′ were completely blinded to the fact, that one of them – ‘dana1981′ – had in fact, carried out the very same thing they so vehemently denied.
That reminds me of something I once said about the Internet:
Anonymity breeds contempt
I wonder if Cook will rise to the level of respect that the Australian National Museum has granted him with their Eureka award and fix this mess “dana1981” has created, or will he turn a blind eye and take one for “The Team”? I’ve done my part to be reasonable and adopt suggestions, the ball is now in John Cook’s court. Ironically, in the attempt to muzzle Dr. Pielke and have him acquiesce to demands, they handily proved his original point.
The way defenders of climate science are acting these days, it does indeed beg the question Can We Really Call Climate Science A Science?
h/t to Kevin Hearle for the Forbes article
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I have thought for some time that Climate Science (as currently practiced) and cosmology (same) are very similar disciplines requiring the same caliber of mind. The sort of (subsidized) person who will tell you with an air of certainty that the temperature of the earth will rise .076% of a degree in the next 50 years will also tell you what happened between the 14th and the 17th nanosecond of the Big Bang. Both theories require constant revision to keep up with inconvenient reality while claiming to have been valid all along. Both require copious computer models and math formulas in lieu of facts.
“From my perspective, while I once said that John Cook was at least “civil in his discourse with me”, and for that reason I gave Skeptical Science a place on my blogroll. I’m rethinking that now after seeing this latest ugliness.”
At least you got a crossout. My posts have been simply deleted even though they were on topic. SkS is irrelevent as an interactive forum for discussing science. And its not surprising its poster numbers have dropped to pretty much zero lately. There has been a desperate attempt recently to revive it.
@Mr. Lynn September 19, 2011 at 4:15 pm:
Yes, it IS what it would take, and the tilt of the media WAS in the direction of the ‘deniers.’ It is about 50-50 whether someone hadn’t already done that, albeit surreptitiously, in releasing the Climategate files and emails. It is as likely that someone on the inside leaked the files – perhaps even more likely, since the bobbies apparently never came up with any evidence of hacking.
@John Howard September 19, 2011 at 5:21 pm:
Amen, John. Your last sentence has been my observation for years. It happens in almost ALL the sciences – some new fact blows everything away, so they eat humble pie a short while, then back to the “we know everything now, so STFU” meme. Climate science isn’t alone at all, nor is cosmology. Try asking two quantum physicists to explain quantum physics to you. Among themselves they admit that they are each and every one ignorant of what it is, but publicly they put on a show of all-knowingness. And archeology? I’ve come to demote arkies to the status of historians. As Mark Twain said (paraphrased), “It is amazing how much archeologists can conclude from so little.” It hasn’t changed since his day. But you pointing out cosmologists, that is a good ‘get’ on your part. Biologists, geologists, astronomers, too. Even chemists – the ongoing work on cold fusion (around the world) by people of several disciplines shows they don’t know everything there is to know. Chemistry is based on the premise of the Law of Conservation of Energy, and cold fusion, when (not if) it becomes a real reality, it will shoot down that ‘Law.’
I love your phrase “while claiming to have been valid all along.” Yes, exactly. Pretending to the public that nothing has changed, that the previously all-wise are still all-wise. I keep a folder for what I term “Science does it again” articles, though I started the folder 50 articles late. When another such article comes out, I declare, “Hubris is dead! Long live hubris!“
Ken Harvey says:
September 19, 2011 at 6:57 am
… Frequently on scientific sites, and too often on this one, (as one can see somewhere above) comments appear that indicate that the commentator is labouring under the misapprehension that the word “data” is strictly a plural. …. When one speaks of a body of data such as is generally the case with climate matters, the the word ‘data’ takes the singular verb. This is not optional – it is obligatory. Does it matter? Yes it does, since the incorrect plural use makes the user sound like a misguided pedant, and if spoken makes the user sound like an idiot. [emphasis added]
I do not agree that abandoning proper usage is ever “obligatory”, merely because alternative usage has appeared in print, due in no small part to the fact that American schools have ceased to include etymology and morphology in English curricula (my public-school classes did so, in fact, from the seventh through twelfth grades). As an erstwhile published theoretical and descriptive linguist, sometime technical writer, and now prolific documenter at work, I decline–adamantly–editorial changes that would render my text ungrammatical, semantically incoherent, or perilously ambiguous. As regards datum/data, there is in my view little evidence that the phrase “the data” ought ever take a singular verb, if one assumes as I do an educated audience, even given the undeniable probability that some portion of the actual audience has not been so educated. The suggestion that a body of measurements, explicitly referred to as “the data”, is anything is as discordant as the mention of “an interesting phenomena”. (Note that I accept Linguistic Society of America punctuation regarding quoted phrases followed by a comma or a period, where the sentence itself is not being quoted, in case anyone takes offense at the sequences [“,] and [“.].)
Would this same linguist insist that everyone learn and write exclusively in my dialect and register of Standard Literary English? No. When someone asks me to edit their writing, I make suggestions to be accepted or rejected as they wish. On the other hand, I do not prescribe the use of any neologism as obligatory, except in the case where there is no better supported alternative.
suyts,
I have spent (wasted?) a year trying to create a dialog with Warmists.
Now I agree with you; it really is not worth the effort as you can no longer find a Warmist site that does not censor contrary opinions.
I used to like SkS and BNC (Brave New Climate) but recently both of these sites imposed “Moderation” policies similar to Joe Romm’s “Climate Progress”.
If the Warmists had anything going for them they would not fear debating the science. The Stalin/Trotsky dialog quoted in the Forbes article skewers this point:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2011/09/18/can-we-really-call-climate-science-a-science/
Now these Warmist sites only allow comments that conform with their creed and that should tell everyone that they are pushing religion or politics rather than science.
I have noticed that there are only two climate web sites that attract huge numbers of thoughtful comments. One is WUWT and the other is Judith Curry’s “Climate Etc”. Could the popularity of these sites have anything to do with the moderation policies they apply?
Tim Minchin says:
September 19, 2011 at 4:53 pm
If you have access/edit rights to the wordpress folder on your server all the PhP source code is there. You can modify to your heart’s content. I didn’t like a number of things about it back when I was running a wordpress blog and changed it to my liking. The only hassle is carefully documenting the modifications you make because when you upgrade to a newer version your modified PhP files will get replaced so you have to insert your changes all over again.
This will get you started:
http://wpbits.wordpress.com/2007/08/14/navigating-wordpress-source-code/
TimTheToolMan,
I remember seeing you at SkS. I think you nailed it. Soon after [Daniel Bailey], [dickranmarsupial], [dana1981] et al. took over the “Moderation” task the poster numbers plummeted.
Folks like the ToolMan, “Berenyi Peter” and this camel stopped commenting. The site became just another echo chamber on the “Climate Progress” model. BOOOOORING!
SkS could easily revive itself by returning to John Cook’s original moderation style that was ……….moderate. I exchanged emails with the site owner a few months ago but he upheld the new heavy handed moderation style. One can hope for a change of heart but I am not holding my breath.
BNC (Brave New Climate) imposed draconian “Moderation” policies in relation to the CAGW debate but their poster numbers will not suffer very much because the site’s main mission is promoting nuclear power and that is still done in impressive fashion.
Lucy Skywalker,
Thank you for really interesting comments. I note that you are interested in Rudolph Steiner, a truly amazing person. Many of his ideas live on such as the “Emerson Waldorf” schools.
On the topic of SkS you said:
“But, dear people at SkS, you must give references to the best work of both sides!”
That is pretty much how I feel but they may have painted themselves into a corner. Let’s hope they can find a way back.
Ian W
I think you’re right, but what they don’t realize is that sometimes even a shark in the water isn’t anything to worry about.
Mr Lynn says:
September 19, 2011 at 2:35 pm
There’s a terminology (pun intended) problem to be sure. Everyone’s probably familiar with the terms geology and biology. Both are experimental sciences and there’s no need for expansion into geological science or biological science to make it clear. Climatology, on the other hand, is not an experimental science. It’s an actuary science concerned with probabilities, statistics, and mathematical models.
“Climate Science” appears to be a catch-all phrase for many scientific disciplines like atmospheric physics, oceanography, solar physics, and so forth with many tangential connections to biology, botany, chemistry, economics, political science, and even theology. The last one, theology, is a real kicker as the so-called climate scientists just can’t seem to resist disparaging sucessful, productive scientists like Spencer and Christy because they happen to believe in God while the typical academic asshat is an atheist with the fundamental belief that anyone who believes in God can’t be playing with a full deck.
In reply to feet2the fire.
I enjoyed your reference to Mark Twain. My favorite Twain quote comes from “Life on the Mississippi”.
“There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.” Mark Twain
That applies especially to climate skcience
If you wonder what’s driving the carbon aspect of climate science, consider the following:
http://spectator.org/archives/2011/09/19/the-carbon-cults-price-signal
kim;) says:
September 19, 2011 at 7:09 am
dana 1981 = Dana Nuccitelli
Environmental Scientist
Dana Nuccitelli is an environmental scientist at a private environmental consulting firm in the Sacramento, California area. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in astrophysics from the University of California at Berkeley, and a Master’s Degree in physics from the University of California at Davis. He has been researching climate science, economics, and solutions as a hobby since 2006, and has contributed to the climate science blog Skeptical Science since September, 2010.
http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/bio.php?u=25
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A ‘know-it-all’ hardly out of nappies. Weakened by his hobbyist approach to the science he acts as a cultist.
Lesson for Dana from my wise old departed father, … “get out there son whilst you are young and full of it because when you are old and decrepit as I, you too will be just as stupid.”
Malcolm Miller says:
September 19, 2011 at 4:12 pm
” I was horrified to find that one correspondent thought that ‘climate science’ should be compared to astrophysics … ”
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I’m sure that they meant ‘astrology’ … has the ‘astro’ in front of it as well 🙂
Can We Really Call Climate Science A Science?
For sure we can just like the Science of Humanology. What! You haven’t heard of my peer-reviewed, learned mates and I? That’s obviously because we sit at the commanding heights of Science far above biology, medicine, physiology, anthropology, chiropracty, reflexology, iridology, astrology,….!!!
All you poor skeptical chumps or denialist chimps as the case may be, just need to know for the present, is that mass colonic irrigation is the only sensible course to save mankind now. Well that and a rollout of tinfoil hats to deflect the cosmic rays, among a few other urgent UN programs we have planned for you in Brussells.
Reply: I get the facetiousness of your comment, but so many of our readers have such a poorly developed sense of humor (cough, cough, nevermind, can’t name names), that I would suggest in the future you dial it back a bit, or spoil your dry humor with /sarc tag as is often suggested by others here. ~ ctm
Regarding the controversy over data, here are a couple of posts from the past (here on WUWT):
That’s not so. Fowler, in Modern English Usage, states, “Latin plurals sometimes become singular English words (e.g., agenda, stamina) ….” As long as it’s OK to employ those words as singulars, it’s OK to do the same for “data.”
An interesting post and one that brings up a doubt that I think a great many people have.
I’m all for trying to get a clearer answer and I’ve never been a crazy taken-at-the-word follower regarding climate change and such – I do feel however that we have a tendency to be lazy about these things and who can argue that increasing efforts to reduce dependance on limited fossil fuels and to generally reduce pollutant levels in the air as much as possible is a bad thing?
Is the planet getting hotter? I don’t know, but I do see some of the more intelligent measures to reduce pollution helping people and I do feel a difference when I go to cleaner and less polluted places.
This alone should be reason enough but for some reason we are more fixated on fighting each other over this stupid argument then just saying “yeah, we should work on these things” and making an honest effort to do so and just getting on with it instead of burning energy and effort for nothing. Really nothing.
Colin in BC said
Sorry to be pedantic, Anthony, but this is a huge pet peeve of mine. The phrase ‘beg the question’ carries a specific definition in logic, sometimes more commonly known as the circular argument. The phrase is not intended to refer, literally, to a question (although this usage has become pervasive in the common vernacular).
Correct verbiage in this case would be ‘to raise the question.’
An increasing number of people are using “to beg the question” as Anthony did. Some dictionaries give “to raise the question” as one of the meanings. So either you’re not right, or you won’t be right for long. This is extremely unfortunate because it makes it harder to point out the fallacy of begging the question.
feet2thefire said Try asking two quantum physicists to explain quantum physics to you. Among themselves they admit that they are each and every one ignorant of what it is, …
That’s not true! I would guess that you’re talking about inability to answer the question of how Nature can be that way, but they freely admit that they can’t answer it.
Far be it from me to disagree with Fowler, but I will to this extent: ‘Data’ has one sense which is more like ‘cattle’ than ‘wheat’, i.e. a collective noun. Just as we say “The cattle are grazing. . .” so we can claim “The data are unambiguous,” or “The data have been poorly collected.” In point of fact, data can be both counted and measured, so depending which sense you want to emphasize, both the singular and the plural usage can be correct.
That said, I still like phil c’s suggestion (September 19, 2011 at 11:56 am), or implication, that we distinguish between ‘data’ as collected (‘raw data’?) and ‘data’ as processed. The former is more like ‘cattle’, and the latter more like ‘wheat’. Maybe we need two terms.
/Mr Lynn
Dana1981, who wrote the Skeptical Science article, One-Sided ‘Skepticism’, is the same dana1981 of yahoo answers. to get an idea of his views/character and just how far he will go to denigrate, “discredit” anyone who disagrees with him check out what he has been up to over the past couple of years.
http://answers.yahoo.com/activity?show=20f3291b9320a302e9070bf55325531daa
From my post above and more to the point. Check out his own questions. Just how many questions could one individual, who is not OCD, ask about Global Warming and skeptics? http://answers.yahoo.com/activity;_ylt=Ai4DXXbjvOntFmC8LvQyWK3sy6IX;_ylv=3?show=20f3291b9320a302e9070bf55325531daa&link=question#yan-questions-answers
It’s a pet peeve of mine too. (Along with the nearly universal misuse of “comprise.”)
These are the people who thought Mannian Statistics and the Jones-Briffa ‘extensions’ to the ‘brand new field of mathematics’ called ‘Climate Math’ was REAL MATH; of course until the head of the Royal Statistical Society apprised them that the statistics “weren’t real statistics” and that in fact “..no ‘Climate Math’ is mathematics of ANY kind.”
These are the people who thought Photonic energy furiously dragging entire molecules in circles as the photon/air molecule interacted in a gravitational field – said photons dragging said air molecules UP – these are the people who thought that for UTTERLY MAGICAL REASONS, suddenly these VERY UPWARD-DRAGGING PHOTONS emitted:
D.O.W.N
Down?
Yep.
These are the people who thought Steven Schneider wrote a paper where he DERIVED AIR TEMPERATURE more ACCURATELY from WIND SPEED than -READ THIS: ANY THERMAL SENSOR ON EARTH.
SO MUCH more accurately, he SAID, HE ‘CALYALATED’ TEMPERATURE from W.I.N.D. S.P.E.E.D, that “finally all those skeptics will shut up, and we will be using this calculation method I.N.S.T.E.A.D. OF T.H.E.R.M.O.M.E.T.E.R.S. from NOW ON.
Yes. He ACTUALLY THOUGHT he CALCULATED TEMPERATURE from W I N D speed.
AND SO DOES TRENBERTH; SO DOES MANN; SO DOES JONES and SO DOES HANSEN.
These are the people who, if you ask, get so quiet you can hear CRICKETS if you just say “If there’s more INFRA RED in the ATMOSPHERE then WHY is the FIELD of INFRA-RED TELESCOPY UTTERLY SILENT through ALL THESE DECADES?
Why is the field of OPTICAL telescopy UTTERLY SILENT about the MANDATORY EVER-INCREASING m.o.t.i.o.n. OF THE AIR as it HEATS: heat, on gas, being DEFINED as M.O.T.I.O.N…..
this motion… it’s called Atmospheric Scintillation.
The STARS twinkling over these TWINKS’ heads.
Ask them WHY the ATMOSPHERIC SCINTILLATION hasn’t grown as heat has grown and watch THEM ‘GROAN’.
These people are the banjo-picking, barefoot-on-the-porch MORONS who thought TWELVE YEARS of electromagnetic energy graphs from C.E.R.E.S. etc, that would put a forensic accountant to sleep, were “ever accelerating, UNSTOPPABLE, APOCALYPTIC WARMING… as the earth in fact, went through the slow, lazy change, from a MODERATELY WARM half-oscillation, to one that’s cool.
These people who have SCAMMED not millions, but BILLIONS and COST HUMAN LIVES SCAMMING the nations of the world’s emergency mitigation, farming, insurance, resources,
CAN NOT EVEN R.E.A.D. in many cases. They CAN NOT GRASP that PHOTONS ESCAPE UP due to GRAVITY’S interaction on the ATOMS of GAS they resonate on.
They CAN NOT GRASP that for PHOTONS to TURN and DIVE DOWNWARD INTO a SEA of GAS in a GRAVITATIONAL FIELD,
the POLARITY of that GRAVITATIONAL FIELD ITSELF: gravitational force being one of the TWO FUNDAMENTAL FORCES of the UNIVERSE outside an atomic nucleus –
must have REVERSED.
These people believe that GRAVITY is REVERSING: and that NO ONE HAS EVER DEVISED a TEST to CHECK their HYPOTHESIS.
This is the kind of LOONBARKING FOOLSPEAK being SCAMMED as GOVERNMENT-GRANT and EMPLOYMENT-WORTHY scientific research we use to SAVE HUMAN LIVES by predicting storms, predicting WHICH CROPS WON’T FAIL keeping thousands from STARVING…
people have ALREADY: albeit more than less not known whom exactly – DIED from these lies.
People caught in winter storms without enough salt or grit for roads.
People caught in weather events contrary to FALSIFIED SCAM PREDICTIONS, having PLANTED the WRONG CROP for the SEASONAL ENVIRONMENT.
These people are all nothing but FAKES, SCAMS, and outright criminals, and indictments need to start coming SOONER
than
LATER.