Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
After years of getting up at 4 AM to go commercial fishing, these days I generally have as little to do with dawn as possible. But last Sunday, I found myself in the Palm Springs airport at 5 AM, boarding a plane to Chicago to go speak at the ICCC7. The Conference is put on by the Heartland Institute, which has had real trouble getting any publicity this year. So I figured I’d go give them a hand …
My connecting flight out of Denver was delayed so I didn’t get to Chicago until the afternoon, and I figured I’d just roll into town. As the world always turns out, things were not quite that simple … because the Conference was being held at the Chicago Hilton Hotel, which was also hosting the NATO Conference and the inevitable associated protests.
Since the main staging ground for the protestors was in the park across the street from the Hilton, the police had barricades up all around there, many of the roads were closed entirely, and my bus couldn’t even drive up to the front door. It dropped us two blocks away, and I had to schlepp my luggage to the hotel. Nor did the fun stop there. Because there were a variety of heads of state staying in the Hilton, there were Secret Service people from a dozen nations all over the hotel. It was like being in some alternate reality where every second person is a policeman … quite strange.
But that was just the surrounding storm. The Conference was another matter, I enjoyed it greatly. Judith Curry has a very catty post up at her blog attacking both Heartland and the Conference, I don’t know why.
Let me start by saying that I have many disagreements with the Heartland folks, and that I went and spoke anyway. Let me see if I can explain why.
For the majority of my life, I’ve been a social liberal and a fiscal conservative. This puts me at odds with both political parties. It also puts me in a very different group than most of the Heartland folks. But that’s all just the personalities. Judith Curry said “I’ve looked at the program, nothing in particular caught my interest, I’ve seen previous presentations from most of the scientific participants.” However, for me, the value in conferences is rarely in the presentations or in the personalities or the political positions—it is in meeting, discussing, and interacting with the participants in the times between the presentations.
So for example I got to spend a delightful hour wandering over to the shore of Lake Michigan with Lucia Liljegren of The Blackboard, who turns out to be as charming, witty and lovely as she is intelligent. I got to meet one of the Moderators of WUWT that I had never met. I got to spend some time with Dr. Willie Soon, whose exuberance and passion seems never-ending, and who gave me some new information of volcanoes and mercury. I got to reconnect with Dr. Craig Loehle, my co-author on our recent paper, who I rarely get to see in the flesh. I got to talk with Anthony Watts, who I usually see only once or twice in a year. Those are the kinds of interactions that are of great value to me.
I also found a number of the presentations to be quite interesting. US Representative Jim Sensenbrenner discussed some of the political intricacies surrounding the attempt to bring reason to the US Government’s role in the climate issues. Václav Klaus, the President of the Czech Republic, gave a fascinating talk about how he sees the underlying issues in the climate debates. And a number of the scientific presentations were interesting. Yes, as Judith said, I’ve read and heard much of the science before … but it was a chance to directly ask questions of the scientists, which is always a treat.
Finally, it was a chance to talk to some of the Heartland folks. As I said, I have many differences with them. I felt, for example, that their billboard showing the Unabomber was simultaneously true, meaningless, repulsive, and a very self-destructive, unpleasant, and foolish venture into guilt by association. I have said many times that it doesn’t matter whether a statement is made by the head of Greenpeace or written on a bathroom wall. What is important, the only thing that is important, is whether or not it is true. And it matters just as little who believes it as it matters who said it. I can understand their frustration at being the unending target of attacks that are just as vicious and ugly, but “tu quoque” (which is basically Latin for “but Mommy, he did it first”) works no better for adults then it does for children.
But Heartland is no different from any of the other organizations involved in climate change, from Greenpeace to WWF … except that its budget is much smaller, and as far as I know, it doesn’t harass the Greenpeace funders the way that Greenpeace harasses those who fund Heartland. Greenpeace is famous for their unpleasant and intimidating “we know where you live” attitude.
But all of these organizations try to push their own beliefs and ideas, so I don’t understand the opposition to Heartland for doing just that. If you want to get upset about the ethics, people should be as upset about harassment of funders as they are about billboards.
I was also surprised by Judith’s claim that Heartland is “losing the battle”, citing in support articles by the well-known fraud Susanne Goldenberg of the “neutral” media outlet, The Guardian … Judith, for many of us, citing Suzanne Goldenberg marks you as someone who isn’t paying attention. She’s the one who recently flat-out lied about Gleick’s actions, you believe her at your own peril and you cite her at no small cost to your reputation for due diligence regarding the honesty of your sources.
My strong sense from talking to Joe and Diane Bast and some of the Heartland staff is that although there have been some losses from the attacks on the funders whose names were revealed by the mail fraud perpetrated by Peter Gleick, as well as from the billboard fiasco, the Heartland folks are most definitely alive, doing well, and still kicking. Sure, they lost some funders, but they have gained others. And as usual, it’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog, and I don’t detect any slackening in their fighting spirit. My conclusion is, Suzanne Goldenberg’s rumors of Heartland’s death are greatly exaggerated, which is just more of Suzanne’s usual misdirection, falsehoods, and fallacies.
But that doesn’t mean that I agree with a number of the Heartland political positions or those of their followers. For example I sat next to a lovely woman one dinner who was a firm believer in Intelligent Design. She made an argument for intelligent design which was that when we see a watch, we don’t assume that it was a random creation. Instead, we assume that there is a watchmaker.
I’d heard that argument before, but never given it much thought. So I considered it for a few moments, and I replied that if we were to accept that argument, that the job wasn’t done. She asked, what did I mean that the job wasn’t done?
I said that if a complex watch implies a more complex human maker of the watch, and by implication if a complex human watchmaker implies an even more complex maker of the human watchmaker … then by exactly the same logic, the complex watchmaker-maker she called “God” implies an even more complex maker of the watchmaker-maker … and on ad infinitum. In other words, if we are to assume that a complex watch necessarily implies a more complex and intelligent watchmaker, then a complex God must imply an even more complex and intelligent God-maker, and so on …
Clearly she had never considered that her argument contained the seeds of its own destruction … but to my surprise she was honest enough to say so, and to say that she had no counter-argument. I admired her for that. But it was a clear example of the generally large distance between myself and a number of folks at the Conference. For example, I think that human beings require regulations, or else people will piss in the drinking water. To me it’s a no-brainer, we’ve proved that many, many times in a host of realms. But a lot if not most of the participants seemed to see any and all regulations as tools of the devil incarnate … not me.
As I said above, however, that wasn’t the point, that’s not the science, that’s just the personalities and the political and religious beliefs. For me, the science, and the opportunities to discuss the science with the scientists, transcends all of that. Politics makes strange bedfellows, and I can live with that.
My conclusions from the Conference were that overturning the current climate science paradigms and the AGW supporters’ activism and malfeasance is going to be a long, slow slog. People like Suzanne Goldenberg want to prematurely claim either victory for their side, or the defeat of their opponents’ side … me, I think this will take years to settle. And more importantly, as far as I can see, neither Heartland nor I have any intention of giving up that fight.
And that for me was the main lesson from the Conference.
w.
PS—On the last day, I walked around the block for some exercise. Upon returning to the Hilton, I noticed a man holding a sign that from a distance read “THE WORLD IS FLAT”. As I came closer, I noted that there was small print, and his whole sign said “The Heartland Institute says THE WORLD IS FLAT”. I stopped and said to him I’d never seen such a statement from Heartland … he said well, no, but “a number” of the Board of Directors think the world is flat. How do you know that, I asked? They’re that kind of people, he said. Ahh, I thought, another follower of Suzanne Goldenberg.
He asked, wasn’t I was ashamed be associated with an organization that gets its money from “giant corporations”? I said that Greenpeace and WWF historically have gotten big donations from the giant oil companies, wasn’t he ashamed to be associated with them?
He said that it was OK for them to take oil money from giant oil corporations, because Greenpeace and WWF do good work … I sighed, and went back into the hotel to listen to something logical and understandable …
Willis,
Thank you for your honesty and tenacity. There are too few people like you who are willing to try to understand ideas that they disagree with. Even fewer are those who will engage and criticize those who general direction they agree with, but disagree on certain aspects – without trying to smack them down.
I, however, do not share your belief that it will necessarily take a long time for the catastrophic global warming paradigm to wither away. Once people are given the opportunity to express their doubts openly, and debate on equal terms with the “consensus” without fear of reprisals to their careers and reputations. Once “scientists” can be properly asked to substantiate their hypotheses, and expose them to criticism then people will begin to see that the more extreme predictions are without scientific underpinnings. When these things happen, suddenly the dam will break.
We recognize the watch in the forest as a human product only because we already know watches and humans; if we didn’t, we wouldn’t. So the analogy requires the prior knowledge of God. Moreover, what distinguishes the watch from its environment is simultaneously what makes them analogous — a contradiction.
As to regulations, we need laws to punish murder, that’s true. But the water supply should be private property. We don’t need the government to provide water, but to enforce property rights.
Fostering debate is a noble cause, as long as it doesn’t become the objective.
Well then, you have written something that I disagree with. Standing up in public to argue a point or assessment of science is sonething I wholeheartedly agree with. Shouting to the rooftops that one believes fraud is committed is another area where I agree. Arguing in public about a person’s personal opinion, especially if you believe they were bamboozled is incorrect to me.
Disagree publicly if you will, just be civil about it (which personally, I think you are). But don’t you think Judy would appreciate it better if she doesn’t have to be publicly embarrassed about. This isn’t about science, this is about a person’s feelings, but should we believe publicly bashing a person’s feelings works better than getting them accurate information would?
Seriously, Judy read something in black and white that reeked of possibile outcomes and jives with her dislike of the billboard (and possibly Heartland) and believed what she read. Time is short and not everyone thinks of looking for verified cross references. Judy saw names and viewpoints referenced in that trash column and accepted the worst, yeah she should have known better, but for whatever reason missed the obvious.
You pointed Judy’s mistake out and described very well a few major points of error. Given that your few words of disappointment in Judy’s writing/attitude alone should have been a clarion bell to Judy, that maybe she needed to look at the situation again. Judy’s post at her blog looks like it has been jumped on by hosts of CAGW believers as a vehicle to trash Heartland. Everyone should go post their concerns about Judy’s mistaken impressions on her blog. State the facts and where to find them, and don’t feed her trolls or try to argue with them. Unless you want to play with their minds some. Thrashing Judy’s opinions here, are well, useless unless we’re just being gossipy.
I thought your impression of the billboard fairly descriptive of my own feelings, though I’m less sure about the truth in the billboard since I’m unsure whose words are whose at first glance; truly repulsive and definitely a mistake. Can you imagine commuting to your commercial fishing job at 4AM and seeing that face and statement? Ugh, bad on all senses involved including common sense! Great reply to the Intelligent Design lady!
biff33 says: @ur momisugly May 25, 2012 at 5:10 pm
As to regulations, we need laws to punish murder, that’s true. But the water supply should be private property. We don’t need the government to provide water, but to enforce property rights.
________________
And part of property rights is Criminal Trespass. If you dump your sewage in the stream my cows drink from and they get sick/die from e-coli you can see me in court!
Unfortunately that concept was over turned with the idea of “Pollution being the price of progress” before WWII.
Willis thanks for the write-up of the Heartland Conference, much appreciated.
I note David Woljick @9.32 on link provided to J Curry replied to a blogger selling ignorance as knowledge is a hoax, is it not?”
Again, your article and responses are much appreciated. PS I hope you have not planned to extend your thumb on the highway home. 🙂
andrewmharding says
I think that those of us who instinctively think that AGW is a load of c**p need to disprove said AGW by questioning the data and the motives of the scientists producing that data.
————
Well you are being slippery claiming you are “questioning” motives.
The blatant fact is that many of you deliberately lie about scientists motives. You certainly don’t now climate scientists personally, you have not asked what their motivations are and yet there’s constant story telling about what climate scientists are.
None of you can read minds do these claims about scientists motivations are all made up.
All of these claims are intended to discredit climate scientists so their views will be ignored.
Of course. After all: It’s turtles all the way down!
Wilis,
Concerning the watchmaker story, you do not understand the reality represented by the concept ‘God’,
If one considers that ‘God’ is omnipresent, then God is simultaneously everything that you postulated in your watchmaker story. Iow, God is non-dual, a ONE that is all that exists, and the perception that there is a multiplicity that constitutes the whole of existence is an illusion brought about by your mind;s dualistic predisposition to conceptualize yourself as existing separate from that which you perceive.
.
“For example, I think that human beings require regulations, or else people will piss in the drinking water.”
We need some rules, but how many and how do we implement them? Government? A government with the power to “safeguard” our water supply can (and will) also make us buy “green” electricity we don’t want at prices we don’t want to pay. We might be better off checking the water supply ourselves (figuratively speaking) and buying electricity as we please.
Willis, two parts of your article remind me of an old but true story, intelligent design and the bill board. In the early 1960’s at a meeting of the Flat Earth Society in London an elderly woman objected the speaker “conjecture” that opposed the society’s position. She said ” young man everyone knows that the Earth is flat and sits on the back of a giant turtle” To which the speaker responded and madam “what holds the turtle up?” To which she responded ” turtles all the way down of course”
w.e. has given many of us a cogent and provocative account of his personal benefits from attending ICCC7. (An exception is made for “David, UK” who lists nothing specific – provoking my recognition as a British Educated American that he’s simply too secularized to grasp the US Right – and therefore need to catch up with his compatriot’s appreciation in “The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America,” by Adrian Wooldridge, John Micklethwait.)
Let me respond to a few controversies I consider the most compelling: conservatives and the Argument From Design (pointing to a Creator), politics and climate science, and whither AGW?
Regarding intelligent design arguments, the reductio ad absurdum was well delivered by Willis and well-received by his co-conferee. The Objectivist amateur philosopher (later turned libertarian) George H. Smith nicely developed the pro- and con- arguments for all of the traditional arguments for the existence of God – note to Aquina’s “Summa” fans – in his 1970s book, “Atheism: The Case Against God.” It is now considered an atheist classic, having been republished by Prometheus Press.
The crotchety – or offensive (as you prefer) – New Atheist, Richard Dawkins, was in fine (and less offensive) form in demolishing Arguments From Design in his old book “The Blind Watchmaker.” Mathematical probability turns out to be a friend of Enlightenment. For instance, while the inductive argument “there are no two snowflakes alike” certainly was proved some fifty years ago by examination and comparison of snowflakes, later scientists took apart the total number of crystals what make up a snowflake, and calculating all that fall in a year, it turns out that there simply have to be reproductions of identical snowflakes.
Therefore we know by deduction that the uniqueness of snowflakes argument (ergo, it implies a designer) is false, but actually producing an example is more of a needle in a haystack problem than anything else. As many like Willis who have unpacked time series and data sets, large numbers do trip up laymen and inadequate climate scientists, time and time again. Simple order or magnitude exercises can often remedy the disbelief. (Some of us here included!)
In any event, Darwin’s theory of natural selection was more influenced by Adam Smith’s and the Scottish Enlightenment’s ideas of spontaneous order than many conservatives appreciate.
I am glad that Willis appreciates the ‘broad (and tolerant) tent’ embraced on the Right, in contrast to the herded and intolerant to-the-point of fascism of the Left, also too often reflected at climate blogs like RC, tamino, and SKS. This together with the HI unabomber episode, Willis rightly rejects, or else simply unmoved by it. I am more of the apologetic opinion that “if one is going to deal with pigs, don’t be surprised when the mud flies” tolerance for this spasm, only a side-show.
In other words, while the real climate science argument is being won by nature (ie, it isn’t warming when the Holy Church of AGW predicted High Sensitivity to added CO2), more than hubris (cf, the IPCC, the Hockey Team’s “consensus science”), tending to what happened next is certainly high among the interests of those at a conference entitled “Real Science, Real Choices.” (Are you even listening, Judith?)
The presentation by the German paleoclimatologist Sebastian Luning that I viewed this afternoon, along with the expert Q&A follow-up, reminded me how much uncertainty there is in the many streams of data out there. Climate science is yet to fill in and adjust the many variables from the IPCCs LOSU (Level Of Scientific Understanding–just google it) chart (from AR4).
First there is Svensmark’s Galactic Cosmic Ray-cloud driven theory; then there are UV stratospheric warming/cooling theories, affecting ozone and other climate forcing factors; there are also ocean-atmosphere energy balance models where precise measurements have implications science is yet to resolve; and finally, there is Colorado State University’s William Gray, who argues for the role of deep oceanic currents in driving climate. All of these and more may work on different yet complimentary timescales to control our climate — yet none are taken seriously in the Orthodox Church of climate science.
I was delighted to see Luning skeptical of the invocation of volcanic aerosols to save CO2-driven AGW theory, since they don’t last in the atmosphere more than a few years, given our solid measurements from Mt. Pinatubo in the early 1990s.
This sliding of science orthodoxy into a messy but exciting confusion thus makes Judith Curry’s invocation of tribal values by casting aspersions upon ICCC7 all the more disappointing. Clearly, her “uncertainty monster” thesis is understood and embraced there. If others do, and there are more of them, they are still too quiet in the university.
Which raises the awkward and troubling question: when does politics trump science? How can one detect when it does? What ought to done about it?
The Left has an easy collectivist answer: follow the consensus! The Right follows no foolish singular, anti-scientific standard, but instead several. Some follow induction, others rely more on Popperian deductivsm, but fewer grasp the radical skeptical power of his anti-justificationist science.
Yet many appreciate the anti-disciplinary, anti-Guild mentality that thrives at the libertarian HI, like Willis does (and I do). To us scientists are not Priests, but simply men and women like us, wit common motives and foibles, responding to common incentives and sanctions – social and otherwise.
Thus, there is a fundamental – maybe American skeptical “show me” – Protestantism at work among AGW-skeptics. This rankles those with lingering Orthodox values (Professor Curry, your “Office” is calling). Perhaps the political psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s new study – “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion” – about politics, but applied to science here, bears some appreciation for grasping with the future.
Haidt shows that Liberals evince three modes of political-moral identity, while Conservatives reveal six. This narrow versus wider spectrum parallels the science-values I identified above. On the Left, only one standard – the One, True, “science-based” standard applies (to all things Good — cf, Chris Mooney). But on the Right, matters are more heterogenous. Haigt shows that while Conservatives and moderates can guess the Liberals stance on most issues, the reverse is not true: the Left cannot see into the Right’s policy judgements. Accordingly,
Does this incommensurability explain the frequent tribalism seen on the Left? The persistent or recurrent bouts of projection, paranoia, and denial? (Dr. Pat Santy, a retired med school clinical psychiatrist, blogging as “drsanity” – just google – owns these insights.) For these same anti-social disabilities turned into manias and sometimes delusions of persecution are frequently seen in the climate science at AGW-alarmist blogs like RC, tamino, and SKS. Since Climategate, these spasms are increasing documented here at WUWT.
What’s the solution? Adopt a Puritan standard for Salvation? Sooner will a camel pass through the eye of needle before the Redemption of Humanity happens in the Church of Ecology? No – quite the opposite.
Like many others posting above, I think the current decade will bring the fall or erosion of Climate Church orthodoxy. But how will skeptics shape the surrender terms? Even the example of the nonagenarian James Lovelock turn-about implies – contrary to Thomas Kuhn – that death need not come before the Institutionalized bastions of science fold (bend or spindle, let me add). “Can” does not imply “will,” however.
The way forward for progress in climate science seems brighter if we AGW-skeptics embrace Popperian insights like those from his student Alan Chalmers. Instead of a monolithic scientific method like the Left and AGW-alarmists embrace, let there be many methods. (See, e.g., Alan Chalmers, “Science and Its Fabrication,” 1990.) Instead of a politicized, “top-down,” IPCC-herd approach to climate science, let us seek its disbandment. Defund the Church of Climate Orthodoxy — let a thousand flowers bloom.
Sooner than later, the failure of a centralized, monolithic ecological Church standard of climate science will be apparent to all with reasonable minds. If skeptics do not advocate a pluralistic standard for the solving of climate problems, then all the recent and coming years progress can be lost. There are already far too many public-privately funded institutions backing AGW-alarmism – The Climate Institute in Washington, DC, to name only one – outfits that would not exist without the Sate Sanctioned IPCC-leadership in the Church.
A competing decentralized model for scientific progress must be articulated and promoted if recent and future gains are not to be wasted. Conferences like those with themes like “Real Science, Real Choices” are places where the future of self-interested agenda-driven science institutions like the AGU and AAAS, with its home on “K Street” – alongside the many, many lobbyists in Washington, DC – can be shaped, bent, or even reformed. This last seems most unlikely, most improbable.
Did anyone not notice the flaw in the watchmaker rebut?….. Not even the person who presented to Willis?
Systems such as watches imply design. As does the complex human systems which are necessary for our life. Our galaxies have systems which imply design. Did anyone suggest God was designed? That God is a product of a system? No, that was a strawman invented by Willis. It was the consequence of his own beliefs toward ID.
God, as typically, thought is without form. God is described as always being, omnipotent, and omnipresent. God doesn’t have a beginning or end, he is the beginning and end, in both time and space. Therefore, God falls outside the being made by a “watchmaker” analogy, and not part of the “creation to infinity” response. Unless someone can assert they see a design in something without form and without constraints.
Agnostics and atheists wouldn’t see that, but it does enable themselves to mindlessly chatter about things they can’t comprehend.
LazyTeenager says:
May 25, 2012 at 5:51 pm
“The blatant fact is that many of you deliberately lie about scientists motives.”
——————–
Your comments are kind of cute, but be careful when using “lie”.
Catty?
How interesting that you love Dr. Curry when she makes points with which you agree,
But she is “catty” when you disagree with her.
Talk about sexist pigs.
PS –
It’s “Dr. Curry” – – not “Judith” or “Judy”.
Have you missed the past 50 years?
Willis, I respect you a great deal, but your watch-maker argument has a fallacy in it a mile wide. You argue that something’s creator must necessarily be more complex than itself. That is clearly not true. I have three creations which are arguably more complex and/or superior to myself. They would be my children. You subscribe to the theory of evolution, and therefore you believe that every organism is capable of producing offspring that is superior to itself. Your own beliefs contradict your watch-maker argument.
Johnnygunn says:
May 25, 2012 at 7:24 pm
“Catty?
How interesting that you love Dr. Curry when she makes points with which you agree,
But she is “catty” when you disagree with her.
Talk about sexist pigs.”
You’re trying to use one person’s comment to paint a broad brush over everyone who posts here.
How f’ing ridiculous\bigoted\steroetyped is that?
Talk about misinformed pigs.
Johnnygunn says:
May 25, 2012 at 7:24 pm
Catty?
How interesting that you love Dr. Curry when she makes points with which you agree,
But she is “catty” when you disagree with her.
Talk about sexist pigs.
Johnnygunn says:
May 25, 2012 at 7:35 pm
PS –
It’s “Dr. Curry” – – not “Judith” or “Judy”.
Have you missed the past 50 years?
==============================================
LMAO!!! Yes Willis!!!! Never ascribe an inferred feminine characteristics to a female! They might come under the impression that you understand the differences in the two sexes of the human species!!!
Uhmm Johnny, let me explain something about proper terms of respect and familiarity. Yes, it is always proper to address someone with a doctorate as Dr. However, as some point in time, once familiarity is established, then it is usually okay to refer them by their given names. Many here have come to know Dr. Curry. It is entirely acceptable for them to refer to Dr. Curry as Judy, or Judith, unless she’s expressly stated she wishes to be addressed as Dr. Curry.
Given as many ludicrous pronouncements and statements we’ve seen from people who possess a “doctorate”, I’m not sure it is a viable expression of respect any longer.
Willis Eschenbach says:
May 25, 2012 at 3:35 pm
” I am generally chary of ascribing motive to people…………..
…………. Yes, that’s exactly what I meant, that she was looking to deliberately hurt Heartland and the people who spoke at the conference. Her tone sounded spiteful. I stand by my word choice.”
*cough*
Johnnygunn: I work with a large number of PhDs and except in formal or ceremonial occasions (or around undergrads) I rarely call them Dr SoandSo. When there is an informal relationship given name forms of address are more appropriate and the insistence of using the Dr. on everything is pretty much limited to those professors that are generally considered prats.
Catty is a reference to a remark made to denigrate without actual reason to do so.The remarks were catty because she did not attend and put down those who did without merit. Catty remarks are made by both sexes, so both your responses here are specious. I have on occasion accused my wife (who I love dearly) of making catty remarks and it does not mean that I have less respect for her interpretation of fact.
Your tone is that of a petulant child who because they haven’t the experience to argue on knowledge choose instead to elevate the discourse to noble utterances such as “I know you are but what am I?” or “you’re a poopy head”. Please step it up to the issue at hand or be forever classified as TROLL.
Johnnygunn says:
May 25, 2012 at 7:24 pm
A “sexist pig”, am I? Please don’t tell the women in my life, they kinda like me.
Johnnygunn, the issue was not that I disagreed with Judith. It was that she was going out of her way, on her usually scientific blog, to attack the ICCC7 conference, Heartland, and the attendees. Now that would have been strange enough, for the simple reason that she has steadfastly refused to say one single bad word about a variety of known scientific miscreants, malfeasants, and cheats.
That’s her privilege, but it does make it more than passing strange that now she’s blasting people she doesn’t even know.
But what made it totally over the top was that she cited the work of Suzanne Goldenberg, who is a craven apologist for Peter Gleick. To this day Suzanne is spreading the lies in the forged Heartland document and claiming that they are the truth. That’s despicable.
So for Judith to do all that, in my book that is way, way over the top.
Sorry, Johnny, but that’s how I see it, and it has nothing to do with either sexism or pork.
w.
PS—I note that despite the fact you think it’s terrible that I said “catty” to describe someone going out of their way to deliberately injure someone, and that despite the fact you think I was abusing Judith, you are doing your best to abuse me, in far uglier terms, and with far less reason …
James Sexton.
I thought Willis’ watchmaker rebut in the manner of ‘turtles all the way down’ was pretty good. I’m less impressed with you simply erecting a sign saying “No turtles beyond this point”.
Johnnygunn says:
May 25, 2012 at 7:35 pm
I have called her Judith many, many times, and she has never given me the slightest indication that she has the slightest problem with that. She and I have lots of history, and she knows I respect her. If she would like me to call her Dr. Curry, I’d be more than glad to, the slightest hint from her would be sufficient. Judith, if you chance to read this and you’d like to be addressed by your title, just say so …
Frankly, Johnnygunn, I think you should get a life, rather than obsessing about what I call her. As I said, we have a history, we’ve been in communication through the blogs for a number of years now. I try to applaud her successes and point out where I think she is wrong, and she is more than happy to do the same for me. We disagree on a number of issues, but from my perspective at least, I respect the stand she has taken, and I think that her blog is a marvel.
In other words … you’re way over your head. After some years of interaction on the Climate Audit blog, the first post I wrote to Judith was entited “Judith, I love ya, and you’re way wrong” … both are still as true as ever. She is a remarkable and inspirational woman who often drives me crazy …
w.
HR says:
May 25, 2012 at 8:43 pm
I am describing her deliberate actions. I haven’t the slightest clue what might have motivated her to take those actions, nor have I speculated about it.
*cough*
w.