WUWT readers may recall our guest post from Russ Steele in 2009: CA Academy of Science AGW display apparently not very popular
Here are a couple of photos from his visit then:
That’s one big hockey stick they got there – click to enlarge
He wrote then:
For the most part these displays were ignored, except for a few casual observers seeking refuge from the long lines at the real science displays. This lack of interest and participation seems to reflect the recent Gallup Polls indicating people are not really concerned about global warming, or ocean warming either. It could be our children have caught on to the scam, or they have reached global warming overload for the school lessons, and want some real science for change of pace.
I visited the CAS for the very first time on Saturday with my children, and I’m pleased to report that the exhibit is now in pieces on the floor, and cordoned off from the general public. I asked a museum docent “why is the global warming exhibit in the museum brochure (showing her mine) but closed off?”
Her response was priceless:
People just weren’t warming up to the exhibit. We are doing a new one on Earthquakes opening soon.
Russ Steele was right.
Maybe it had to do with the message. For example, this bit of ridiculous propaganda in the original exhibit:
Image from “In my Copious Free Time“
Or maybe the fact that people didn’t like being lectured on what to eat, especially when the exhibit was in full view of the museum’s Academy Cafe:
Image above from Wandering Architect.
The “Carbon Cafe” is in shambles now, as is the “green building” portion of the exhibit, click to enlarge:
Here are more views of the dismantled exhibit:
In it’s heyday, it looked like this:
Image above from Cinnabar, Inc. details: New Academy of Sciences, Cinnabar’s “Altered State” Exhibits Speak Up about Climate Change and California
The whale skeleton hanging from the ceiling is still there, but everything else is dismantled.
Maybe it was the labeling of California as an “altered state” in their press release for it that did it in. The LA Times said at the opening that it was a Museuem that Shouts Climate Change.
I guess maybe they shouted too loud, because now they plan to exhibit on something that Californians can really relate to:
When the über green California Academy of Sciences pulls the plug, you know “climate change” is a dead issue with the public.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Berto says:
February 20, 2012 at 12:36 pm
To anyone not determined to believe what is posted here because it agrees with their smug prejudices, this Website stands discredited as a know-nothing anti-global warming site. Enjoy preaching to the choir.
=============================================
As less and less people believe…..
….you will be left with the lowest common denominator
Hang in there Berto…you might be the last one standing
Berto, God bless your little heart. You are trying.
And how many bus loads of school kids were paraded in front of the con job brainwashing displays without parents around to offer snide comments?
Michael Tobis says:
February 20, 2012 at 1:01 pm
see that vertical stripe way over on the left? I find that quite concerning. Clearly there is nothing like it in the record. Now the public might miss it on that scale, but it’s the single most salient feature of the whole thing.
So it makes sense to focus in on it on a shorter time scale, and it was entirely true and in no way misleading.
Do you find the increased plant growth, and thus extra food for the biosphere, and for man concerning? I sure don’t. The whole point is for them to try to demonize C02, and in particular man’s C02. It’s a clever little ruse. Apparently it got you.
Berto says:
February 20, 2012 at 12:36 pm
=====================================
See:
Victor Eigen says:
February 20, 2012 at 6:01 am
=====================================
Thanks, Berto.
QED
At 12:36 PM on 20 February, Berto posted a comment critical of Russ Steele (whose 2009 guest post (CA Academy of Science AGW display apparently not very popular) was cited by Mr. Watts above, and whose photographs of the exhibit were reproduced retrospectively), writing:
This is, of course, evasion of the responsibility to address the substance of Russ Steele‘s 2009 article (or, for that matter, Mr. Watts’ own current post) by attacking Mr. Steele personally by commenting on his supposed lack of “technical background in the areas of science” upon which Mr. Steele had been writing in 2009.
This, of course, is the logical fallacy of argumentum ad hominem.
It might be well to ask what “technical background” could have been required for a person visiting this gormless warmista propaganda display in 2009 to have spoken on what he’d seen, and to report (for example) on how:
The perpetrators of the great gaudy “man-made global climate change” fraud (and those “useful idiots” who clamor and caterwaul the catechism of the AGW cult) seem always and ever to fall back on expertism (a version of the logical fallacy called “appeal to authority”) in which the incantations of academically credentialed charlatans spending taxpayer funds allocated by politicians must be considered automatically to trump the observations, reasoning, and conclusions of people who think and speak and write honestly on the basis of explicitly supported observations of factual reality.
There is in the noise of Berto and his co-religionists a complete abnegation of the principles upon which scientific method operates. It does us well to bear in mind the following statement:
I’m really tired of this “experiment” meme. The planet has played with excursions of CO2 scores of times higher than the present total, and hundreds of times greater than any impact we could have. And nothing happened. If it was warm, it stayed warm. If it was cooling or cold, it stayed that way.
To (significantly) cut back on fossil fuels means the pauperization of the world’s population. Far worse than anything even significant warming would/could/might-or-might-not achieve.
Michael Tobis says:
Bruce Cobb, see that vertical stripe way over on the left? I find that quite concerning. Clearly there is nothing like it in the record.
That is because “the record” was created using an entirely different methodology than was used to create that “vertical stripe way over on the left”. It is analagous to splicing the thermometer “record” onto the treemometer “record”.
So it makes sense to focus in on it on a shorter time scale, and it was entirely true and in no way misleading.
It is incredibly misleading. Splicing an instrument record onto an ice core record is dodgy enough, let alone cropping the ice core record so as to greatly exaggerate the apparent difference between “natural” and “anthropogenic” CO2. And of course, the error bars are MIA.
At 1:51 PM on 20 February, Bill Parsons responds to a warmista: Berto, God bless your little heart. You are trying.
To do what? In Berto‘s comment, the only thing he’d been “trying” was to utter the logical fallacies of argumentum ad hominem and appeal to authority.
Certainly, he said nothing of substance except in his partial recapitulation of what Mr. Steele had previously posted online concerning Mr. Steele‘s personal history.
The hockeyschtick graph of Mann was for temperature. This graph is for CO2.
The temperature hockeystick was generated by abuse of the data and statistical malfeasance. The CO2 graph is from measurements of trapped gas bubbles etc. No statistical skullduggery was involved. It is an experimental result. While one might question details like how long it takes for gases to get trapped as the ice packs down and so on, the current graph uses the best known answer to those questions. It really is that shape.
Of course if you go back far enough you will find still higher CO2 levels – 1000ppm – 2000ppm – more – but not unless you are prepared to go back an awfully long way. I have no doubt myself that current CO2 levels are unusual. I am just sceptical about the claim that this will drive temperature or indeed that there will be much in the way of negative impact at all.
To paraphrase one of the now defunct displays
“Democracies are angry beasts and the Alarmists are poking them with sticks”.
On what basis these arrogant twerps think that their propaganda is swallowed whole without critical consideration by the people of democratic societies who get bombarded with advocacy and propaganda via the media all day every day is utterly beyond me. Good grief, just look at the utter tosh the Republican primaries are throwing up for our contemplation ( and I live in the antipodes and still have the rubbish on my TV so I pity the Americans!) and yet we filter it out, piss it down the toilet so to speak and get on with our lives.
The article just further quantifies the arrogant, empty headed stupidity of these buffoons.
Tucci78,
I suspect Bill Parsons was being sarcastic.
Tucci78 says:
February 20, 2012 at 2:47 pm
——————-
Tucci78,
I took a different view than you about Bill Parsons’s comment to Berto @1:51 PM on 20 February.
I thought Bill Parsons was being appropriately condescending in a sarcastic way to Berto’s ridiculous discourse.
John
Berto says:
I decided to check on who “Russ Steele” is, …
Really? So, you decided to make an ad hominem argument? And you think that this is something that you’d want to brag about? Huh.
Given that the technical matter of your post is a criticism over proper methods of epistimological reasoning, how do you rate the validity of such commentary coming from someone who brags about making ad hominem arguments?
LOL
Am I to understand that a science museum, in California, did not previously have an Earthquake section?
So this is proof that global warming isn’t real?
[Reply: You’re making comments like this on other threads too. Per site Policy, threadbombing is not allowed. Fair warning. ~dbs, mod.]
Berto – Freeman Dyson admits that earth’s climate is not his field of expertise, but he does comprehend (and that verb is an understatement) science, and he is a CAGW skeptic.
@ur momisugly Willis
“PS—How do I know that they didn’t do what I suggested with the exhibits? I don’t really know, but the circumstantial evidence that they turned my idea down lies in the fact that there was no spike in admissions to the hospital Emergency Rooms of Academy of Science employees with proctological complaints …”
=============
That is a classic. It could not have been expressed better.
“Climate is an angry beast and we are poking at it with sticks.”
==================
Contact the Humane Society (HSUS) and PETA. Rabid behavior?
Poster JJ should be more cautious before accusing someone of resorting to an “argumentum ad hominem.” An argumentum ad hominem argument is one that rests the plausibility of what is claimed on the nature of the individual in question, as in “the Iraq II war was unjust, since Pres. George Bush launched it.” Of course that’s a ludicrous argument. The justice of a conflict doesn’t depend on the virtues of the person who declared it. In contrast, the point I made, one that seems to have escaped the resident Latin and philosophy expert, JJ, is that the casual and snide remarks Russ Steele made about the California Academy of Science’s exhibit on global warming are not to be taken seriously since, by virtue of his non-scientific educational background (degree in social science and that from a third-rate school) he has no expertise in climate science that warrants taking his views seriously. To ascribe any credence whatsoever to anything that Steele says about matters of climate science makes no more sense than to ascribe any credence to anything that I might claim about matters of quantum electrodynamics or the merits of medieval literature. While I respect the integrity and scientific seriousness and intellect of a Freeman Dyson, Steele does not deserve a seat at the table of experts whose informed views about climate science merit our non-dogmatic consideration.
Berto says:
February 20, 2012 at 9:41 pm
Berto, you’re not making any sense. After reiterating that your attack is not an ad hominem, you explicitly explain it to be an ad hominem. You say his opinion is worthless because he “does not deserve a seat at the table of experts whose informed views about climate science merit our non-dogmatic consideration” … bro’, that’s nothing but an ad hominem. That’s attacking HIM, and not HIS CLAIMS, which is the very definition of an ad hominem.
Here’s the deal, Berto. Either Russ Steele is right, or he is wrong. It doesn’t matter whether he has a “seat at the table of experts”, that’s more AGW-pushed nonsense. Either he’s right or wrong, and his personal history and what table he sits at is quite meaningless.
According to you, if Russ Steele says that E = MC^2, we should disbelieve him because you don’t like his credentials …
Finally, surely you realize that you have LESS credibility than Russ Steele, because he has declared his name and we know his education. You, on the other hand, are an anonymous nobody who is unwilling even to use his own name … and here’s the crazy part:
Your lack of any credentials makes no more difference to me than do Russ Steele’s credentials. Either what you say is right or it is wrong, even though you’re just an anonymous internet pop-up.
The problem is not your anonymity and your personal lack of even the slightest credentials. The problem is, in this case … you’re wrong …
w.
At 10:25 PM on 20 February, Willis Eschenbach addresses Berto‘s wallowing in argumentum ad hominem anent Russ Steele‘s 2009 guest post reporting on the C.A.S. exhibit, but seems to have missed something else.
When he’d posted at 9:41 PM, Berto had also written:
…presumably anent Dr. Dyson’s opinion of the anthropogenic global warming bogosity, perpetrating yet another argumentum ad hominem fallacy, this time attributing to Freeman Dyson some kind of credibility not on the basis of what Dyson had said or written but simply because Dr. Dyson has a good personal reputation in the sciences.
That’s a positive rather than negative receipt of the skeptical position on the AGW fraud, but it’s still argumentum ad hominem, and is further flawed by virtue of coloration with the logical fallacy of “appeal to authority.”
Have any of these Watermelon witlings so much as had experience of competitive debate in high school, much less passed an introductory college-level course in Logic?
Berto says:
Poster JJ should be more cautious before accusing someone of resorting to an “argumentum ad hominem.”
Poster JJ is quite cautious. And in this case, absolutely correct. QED.
Nice co2 enhanced four story tropical greenhouse.
My wife and I became members of the CAS when it reopened after a lengthy renovation. I love the new CAS (especially the EcoDome), with one exception: the climate change exhibit was one of the most jarring and politically motivated exhibits I have ever seen in a museum dedicated to science. I just gritted my teeth every time I was confronted by it. The claims it made for CAGW were so out of line with the truth, but this is San Francisco, so I was not surprised.
Truth is an equally angry beast. The California Academy of Sciences was really poking at it, and not just with sticks. Now, they see the result.