By Jim Lakely
A quarterly magazine called Skeptic published a cover story a few weeks back by Donald Prothero titled “How We Know Global Warming is Real and Human-Caused.” That struck us here at The Heartland Institute as rather strange.
Our work for years has been skeptical of the idea that human activity is causing catastrophic climate change, which is the conventional wisdom of the mainstream media. And we have two immense volumes of peer-reviewed literature and the videos of many conferences to prove it.
So if the very name of your magazine is Skeptic, shouldn’t readers expect you to carefully examine the spoon-fed doctrines of the likes of Al Gore, Michael Mann, the UN’s IPCC, etc., and be … well … skeptical of “doctrine” — especially in light of the Climategate scandal? Alas, no.
Skeptic magazine, as the headline of the cover story makes clear, is not skeptical of the global warming Roosters of the Apocalypse who say the sky is falling and we’re unnaturally boiling the planet. It’s hysterical, and ironic, that the Skeptic article begins with a quote from Nobel Laureate physicist Richard Feynman:
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.
Yet the fact is: Reality, and scientific observation of nature, tells the truth about the climate — and man is not causing a climate catastrophe. Skeptic Magazine is the one regurgitating public-relations lies disguised as a hard-boiled look at the climate debate and grounded in real science.
Feynman has posthumously become a bit of a YouTube star for his one-minute explanation of the scientific method. The video below, from a lecture at Cornell in 1964, blows up Skeptic magazine’s idea of what science is — let alone the quote the magazine uses to led legitimacy to its article.
In one minute, Feynman lays out how the scientific method works: Theories are constantly proposed, questioned and tested. Only after a theory goes through many exhaustive rounds of scientific examination — using observational data — can a “guess” become a “law” of science. And even then, a well-founded scientific “law” laid down by the smartest people in history is temporary. Just ask Newton.
Yet we don’t seem to have a healthy scientific skepticism when it comes to Earth’s climate. Men and women who couldn’t hold Feynman’s briefcase have for years told us that the science is “settled”: Human activity is causing a catastrophic climate disaster — no matter that their computer model predictions haven’t come true, violating the scientific method and becoming the decades-later butt of Feynman’s presentation. In short, the evidence we can prove shows that the roosters’ predictions are a joke.
Yet Skeptic magazine, of all publications, dedicated a nine-page cover story to carrying water for public-relations hacks — propagandists — and not the kind of real, observable science that should be its hallmark. But let’s not completely condemn Skeptic. It still has the fact that there is no solid evidence for Bigfoot in its favor.
Christopher Monckton — Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, good friend of Heartland, advisor to Lady Thatcher, and one of the most learned “laymen” experts on climate science — gives that Skeptic article a hearty vivisection. Skeptic refused to publish it, so we share it here. There’s a short version and a long version of his reply, and they are both devastating.
Lord Monckton starts it off with his typically cheeky and refreshing in-your-face style:
By Christopher Monckton
Be skeptical, be very skeptical, of Skeptic magazine’s skepticism of climate skeptics. The latest issue has, as its cover story, a Climate Change Q&A, revealingly subtitled Climate Deniers’ Arguments & Climate Scientists’ Answers.
The article, written by Dr. Donald Prothero, a geology professor at Occidental College, opens with the bold heading How We Know Global Warming is Real and Human-Caused.
Anyone who starts out by using the hate-speech term “Climate Deniers” – laden with political overtones of Holocaust denial – cannot expect to be taken seriously as an objective scientist.
Despite this promise of “Climate Scientists’ Answers”, only four peer-reviewed papers by climate scientists are cited among the 41 references at the end of the article.
And the implicit notion that “Climate Deniers” are non-scientists while true-believers are “Climate Scientists” is also unreasonable. Many eminent climate scientists are skeptical of the more extremist claims made by the UN’s climate panel, the IPCC. We shall cite some of their work in this response to the Professor’s unscientific article.
Read Monckton’s full essay here
Perhaps we need a stronger term for warmists when they call us deniers. I suggest LIARS.
The difference in quality between your response and Prothero’s provocation exemplifies of the difference in quality between the arguments of the Alarmists and the Scoffers.
PS: At the end of your critique, you mentioned that Prothero’s article had drawn a negative response on the Skeptic magazine site. Could you post a link to it? TIA.
Abraham Franklin says “Here we have the greatest scientific controversy in a century, and a “skeptical” website would rather run an echo chamber for Bigfoot debunkers!” Should we say that these people are now doing their finanal exam? If you have debunked Bigfood what have you won for science? Besides Bigfoot there still are millions of gnomes. If you have debunked them one after the other you have deprived mankind from its fairy tales and returned nothing to science. In that case you need a serious exam.
Skeptic magazine, James Randi and the like are what I call professional skeptics. Their “credibility” and income are based on what practically amounts to a doctrine of Papal Infallibility. Ie, they are *never wrong*. If they say something is BS, it is BS, no matter what evidence anyone comes up with to the contrary.
They also tend to completely ignore anything they can’t confidently disprove. Arthur C. Clarke was well known as a skeptic, but he’d tackle things he couldn’t disprove and he’d flat out say he couldn’t. True skeptics like him are few and far between.
That Skeptic would use the famous Feynman quote as a lead-in to a servile regurgitation of AGW orthodoxy is, sadly, just par for the course. Somewhere in my climate files (now spread over four computers, two of them dead – I’ve been remiss about backing up to a single external drive) is an article by Hansen invoking Feynman’s “Cargo Cult Science” speech in defense of Hansen’s cargo cult climate science. Sometimes when I’m feeling particularly grouchy and having found myself cornered by some AGW True Believer (I seem to have a rep), I will just baldly assert that in the up-is-down, black-is-white world of climate science, if they just assume that for any assertion made by the Climate Cabal, the opposite is true, their chances of being right approach unity. Juvenile of me, but it’s fun to watch their heads expand and their faces turn bright red.
I dropped S.I. in the mid-nineties, not because they’d drunk the climate kool-aid (don’t believe they had at that point), but because it had gotten boring – debunking ghost stories, UFOs, alien abuctions; preening and strutting about being sooo rational, “the burden of skepticism,” yada-yada. Yawn. Needing something to read on the train several years ago, I picked up a copy at a local book seller, and serendipitously, the whole issue was a staunch defense of AGW, complete w/ pictures & mini-bios of the major players, and of course many comments on the irrationality of the deniers (“irrational” seems to be talismatic for them). I tossed it in the trash when I reached my stop.
Interesting footnote: Eugenie Scott, CSI Fellow & frequent contributor to S.I., is also director of the Center For Science Education (or something like that), which was courting Peter Gleick for some consulting position last Fall. CFSE is of course pro-AGW. As others have noted, it’s not about defending science, which needs no defense, but about defending the science establishment and its gov’t funding.
PaddikJ;
“just assume that for any assertion made by the Climate Cabal, the opposite is true, their chances of being right approach unity.” Long been my Ruler of Thumb! 😉
RoHa;
re astrology comparison, start here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/25/jstor_climate_report_translation/
“The report by Japan Society of Energy and Resources (JSER) is [an] astonishing rebuke to international pressure…”
[SNIP: Off-topic. Way off topic. Monckton-haters really need to get a sense of perspective. They need to get a life. -REP]
Why is it off topic, I thought this was a skeptics site?
[REPLY: Reggie, you do know the meaning of the term “Off topic” right? Neither of your previous comments addressed the topic of the thread, which is the article in Skeptical. You didn’t do that, did you? Instead, you saw Lord Monckton’s name and started frothing at the mouth. Commenting here is NOT a right. Submit comments that are germane to the topic under discussion and they will be posted. You can check here for site policy. This is my final word on the matter. Get with the program and quit acting like a petulant school boy or have your comments trashed. Your choice. -REP]
Prothero is evidently a Renaissance Man, his geology having made him an expert on the world of Late Antiquity. He wrote a fawning review of the movie AGORA which earned a response from Armarium Magnum:
http://armariummagnus.blogspot.com/2012/03/geologist-tries-history-or-agora-and.html
What is the common thread connecting CAGW with AGORA? Why only that both reinforce his own a priori beliefs.
[SNIP: Nice work. You’re done. -REP]
more soylent green! says:
July 23, 2012 at 1:37 pm
As a side topic, are there any decent popular science magazines worth subscribing to?
_________________________________
WUWT
@ur momisugly Brian H
Thanks. Bit surprised to see Akasofu there. I thought he was American.
@RoHa
Akasofu is an immigrant (a long time ago). So he knows Japanese well enough to participate on their turf.
Anyone look through the Skeptic magazine and notice the similarities to The Watchtower?
Here’s an accolade for Monckton’s article I wish I’d thought of in time to post at the head of the thread:
The peerless peer!
Skeptics, as far as I have observed, tend to be skeptical of “psuedoscience”. It’s easy to debunk myths and legends. However, when it comes to actual science, they hide behind the curtain and rattle the “consensus” sword to cover their actions. One must suspect this is because said individuals lack actual scientific knowledge and are forced to rely on the majority in order to hide their own ignorance (I was actually told by one skeptic that he follows mainstream science and he did not care what evidence I had on the topic. When mainstream science changed their mind, he would change his). It is not surprising a paleontologist would agree with climate change–his training is in finding, preserving and cataloging digs. Scientific method is not part of this. So he goes along with the mainstream science. It’s the safest route. Skeptics take the easy way like many people do. Perhaps if skeptics just stuck to ghosts and UFO’s it would be better. Less chance of looking foolish that way.
James Randi is excellent when it comes to debunking pseudoscience such as homeopathy or psychic abilities with his $1M dollar prize challenge but then you get fellows like this at the Randi organization…
http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/1779-the-skeptical-disconnect-redux.html
SC-Slywolf’s comment made me wonder: If those who question AGW are “deniers” and comparisons to the Holocaust are legitimate (which for now I will assume is allowed), what small group swayed millions of people to commit atrocities against humanity in the Holocaust? Perhaps the AGW crowd should consider what role they play if we make Holocaust comparisons. I doubt they really want to go there.
@Edohiguma.
“Murasaki Shikibu, a lady at the imperial court, wrote the first novel of mankind”
Hikari Genji is a great novel, but not quite the first. Greeks and Romans had written novels long before then. It does seem to have preceded Chinese novels, though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_novel
rogerknights gives a good critique of Donald Prothero’s articles. Thanks. He calls him on the ad hominem against Richard Lindzen. However, the glaring error in Donald Prothero’s second article is this (I quote from the article I sent to eSkeptic):
‘in his ‘refutation’ of the various arguments of people (he doesn’t make any references to scientific work, so I cannot write ‘scientists’) for other causes of the observed warming he writes, about the question of the hypothesised cosmic ray-climate connection:
There is no evidence (see Figure 3 below) of increase in cosmic radiation during the past century. [with a reference to a blog, not a peer-reviewed scientific article]
Well, exactly: it is clear from this quote that he has not bothered to read, or has failed to understand, the work on cosmic rays and climate. There is a basic principle in rational thinking (not only science), that you have to understand what you’re criticising before doing so. Donald Prothero has failed in this basic principle.
Briefly, the hypothesis is that the incidence of cosmic rays affects the formation and properties of clouds, which have a major forcing effect on climate; a higher incidence of cosmic rays promotes greater cloud formation and albedo effect, cooling the planet; a lower incidence leads to less cloud formation, warming the planet (as appears to have happened in the 20th century). Donald Prothero appears to think that the hypothesis states the reverse, that the minuscule energy deposited by cosmic rays in the atmosphere somehow promotes warming.’
Sorry, but his article is shoddy.
Sorry for the omission, due to temporary cogtnitive focus, I must also recognise Christopher Monckton’s contributions as especially valuable.