No smear psychological categorization mission is too offbeat for Lew. Now he’s on about “leakage”. Try to stifle the images that conjures up while thinking about your choice of preventative antiemetics.
s mac says: in WUWT Tips and Notes:
Anthony, there is a YouTube video (link below) of Lewandowsky giving a talk at the AGU Chapman conference, and its very revealing and your readers would enjoy, he’s equal parts clown, bully, and circus performer.
He’s desperately trying to find a footprint for what he does – categorize the pigeonhole people and surmise their intentions, motivations — and find a place for it (and himself) in the “save the world” ethos of climate change activists. Video follows:
From the video description:
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AGU Chapman Conference on Communicating Climate Science: A Historic Look to the Future
Abstract Title: Scientific Uncertainty in Public Discourse: The Case for Leakage Into the Scientific Community
Uncertainty is an unavoidable part of science. In the case of climate science, any uncertainty should give particular cause for concern because greater uncertainty usually implies greater risk. However, appeals to uncertainty have been used in public debate to forestall mitigative action. Uncertainty has been highlighted in many situations during the last 50 years in which vested interests and political groups sought to forestall action on problems long after the scientific case had become robust.
We suggest that the prolonged appeal to uncertainty in the public arena has “leaked” into the scientific community and has distorted scientists’ characterization and self-perception of their own work. Although scientists are well trained in dealing with uncertainty and in understanding it, we argue that the scientific community has become unduly focused on uncertainty, at the expense of downplaying solid knowledge about the climate system. We review some of the historical and empirical evidence for the notion of “leakage”, and we identify the psychological and cognitive factors that could support this intrusion of ill-informed public discourse into the scientific community.
To illustrate with an example, the well-known “third-person effect” refers to the fact that people generally think that others (i.e., third persons) are affected more by a persuasive message than they are themselves, even though this is not necessarily the case. Scientists may therefore think that they are impervious to “skeptic” messages in the media, but in fact they are likely to be affected by the constant drumbeat of propaganda. We review possible solutions to the undue leakage of biased public discourse into the scientific arena.
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There you go folks, proof positive that we are having an effect.
Question: if fossil fuel use is so harmful, why do the Lews and Gores of the world continue to use fossil fuel? Rather than tell us to change our ways, why not change yours first? It is quite simple, don’t use anything that relies on fossil fuel.
Actions speak louder than words. I see all sorts of rich and powerful people telling us to change, to mend our ways, to “stop using fossil fuels”. What it really looks like they are saying is “leave more for us”.
When we were kids we did the same thing. Pile of bacon on the table, we’d tell all the other kids how awful it tasted, hoping to get more for ourselves.
Now we are grown up, nothing much has changed. Want to buy waterfront? Tell everyone they are going to be flooded out by rising sea levels. No surprise how many climate guru’s preach one thing and do the opposite. They see the pile of bacon on the table.
Leo Geiger
No, but few people commenting here have managed to get it straight so you are not alone.
The key part that repeatedly is ignored is the range of consequences the uncertainty covers. If increasing uncertainty means the smoke you smell is more likely to include the possibility of a serious fire, you shout “fire!” If decreasing uncertainty allows you to rule out a serious fire, you don’t have to shout “fire!” That is what is being described.
Where is your evidence there is actually any problem? You can play this ridiculous uncertainty game ad-infinitum, but unless you have actual observational evidence there is some kind of problem, its a complete waste of time.
I have given an example of this in my compelling theory post. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/10/why-a-compelling-theory-is-not-enough/
The set of compelling theories which are not backed by evidence is probably infinite – unless you apply Occam’s razor to weed out the junk, including the unsupported theory that we are threatened by dangerous climate change, there is no end of shadows you can jump at.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/22/occams-razor-and-climate-change/
“We suggest that the prolonged appeal to uncertainty in the public arena has “leaked” into the scientific community ”
Well, as the modelers were so certain of the predictive skill of their models, somebody HAD to tell them that that’s a cr*ck of sh*t.
We have to thank the idiots for exposing the MSM / state media as the propaganda tools they are. Many good people have been driven out of the media and replaced with IPCC lickspittles and we know now that Western media are completely corrupted.
If no rebuttal to the absurd Moon Hoax paper appears in the peer reviewed literature of psychology, that says a lot–negative–about the peer reviewed literature of psychology. And its practitioners.
Will the Lew papers ever pass Pee Revue?
DirkH
Well, as the modelers were so certain of the predictive skill of their models, somebody HAD to tell them that that’s a cr*ck of sh*t.
Climate alarmists are now like witch doctors shaking their rattles while trying to explain to people that their truth is still the only truth. After a while, the evidence becomes so overwhelming that they are wrong, its just downright embarrassing to go on, even though their livelihoods depend on it. Thankfully they’ve got Lewandowsky to help fan the dying embers of their commitment.
I’m sorry, my eyes glazed over there for a bit…does he actually consider himself a scientist?
I realize that the bar has sunk quite a bit these days concerning science, but is it really that bad?
BTW, the last time I heard the team “leakage” it was in conjunction with a certain brand of potato chip that had to be pulled off the market (i.e, retracted) due to a rather unfortunate side effect.
“[G]reater uncertainty usually implies greater risk.”
WT very F??! Practically the first words of his abstract and already he is uttering eye-popping nonsense.
I read no further.
So, the take-away message from Lew himself is that we skeptics/climate realists are winning. Yes indeed, the truth is far more powerful than any lies the Warmists tell, especially a “certifiable fruitcake nutter and total frigging as*hole” like Leaky Lew.
If increasing uncertainty means the smoke you smell is more likely to include the possibility of a serious fire, you shout “fire!”
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that means the less information I have, the more reason I have to raise the alarm, because if I don’t know the cause, then I can’t rule out the possibility of a serious fire.
Under that prescription, those that know the least should be the first to shout the alarm. While those with the most information should be the last to raise the alarm.
Which pretty much describes Climate Science. Gore and Lew are shouting the alarm. One’s a divinity student, the other a social scientist. The engineers are too busy out in the field finding oil.
Thus, Lew has done the Science Community a great service. He is arguing that those the know the least are the ones shouting the alarm the loudest.
What would be the term equivalent to “theocracy” but entailing science instead of religion? That is what Lewandowsky is striving towards.
His video reminds me of this scene:
I think Lewandowsky, in actually pushing the idea that greater uncertainty only equals greater risk, is now ready to move from the University world to the UFO abductee world.
… greater uncertainty usually implies greater risk. However, appeals to uncertainty have been used in public debate to forestall mitigative action.
===========
by Lew’s own argument, uncertainty increases the risk of mitigative action. He is trying to argue that since we don’t know what will happen if we stay the course, we should change course.
Now apply that logic to your own life. You are going along and enjoying a reasonably happy life. Since you can’t be sure about tomorrow, you should change what is working for something you have never tried before. Lew-tard comes to mind to describe this sort of logic.
Scientists love to wrap the world in complication, so that the nonsense in their work is not so obvious to all.
@Jim Stevens, the word you are looking for is either positivism or technocracy.
Strange, I can’t recall any of the alarmist scientists ever mentioning uncertainty …
Pointman
Just a word of appreciation to all the commenters here saying the video is not worth watching: thanks!
@Daniel G
“@Jim Stevens, the word you are looking for is either positivism or technocracy.”
Thanks.
When I was in college an oft-heard put-down was that Psych majors had the lowest IQ of all the sciences, and Lew does not disabuse.
Any impartial viewer (someone not familiar with Lew’s recent escapades) of this talk would likely ask:
“whatever does this subject matter, and this guy, have to do with a scientific conference on the physics of climate and CO2? Why is he on the stage?”
And after watching it through, I conclude that Lew’s whole schtick is to find a foothold in the climate science debate wherein “other” sciences unrelated to the measurement and analysis of the atmosphere and the physical climate (for example his specialty, experimental psychology), can also “contribute” to the save-the-planet cult and share the wearing of its mantle, that “we psychologists are saving the world too”.
Lew’s presentation (note his comfortable use of the word “deniers”) is framed in a shared discourse of the cult: Lew’s presentation assumes — at this meeting of career geophysicists — that 100% of the audience entirely equates scientific skepticism of climate modeling and CO-2 with “denying the undeniable”.
As for the experiments that he cites and summarizes, in essence he posits that they stand as proof that any climate scientist who expresses a lack of scientific certitude, based on their exposure to competing arguments and data, is expressing pathological cognitive behavior, “leakage”.
The ability to consider alternative scientific hypotheses is, in effect, a pathology. (So much for the sentiments of ‘Nullius in verba’)
One cannot leave his performance without the impression that he’s inadvertently framed himself as clownlike in relation to the “real” scientists, akin to the court jester, except Lew’s is the mean clown rather than the funny clown.
This approach to uncertainty is frought with danger for Dr. Lewandowsky:
Since it is uncertain if he is suffering from a psychotic breakdown, he should be treated with powerful anti-psychotic meds stat. And since it is uncertain if the meds will work, he should be given a round of electroshock therapy. And since that may not work, he should be considered for a lobotomy, simply because the uncertainy is too great.
Can we validate his word test? Let’s try:
fraud
fake
con
phony
sham
mountebank
charlatan
quack
Let these words percolate. Back in a second with part 2.
That settles it!
Lew has Munchausen Syndrone by proxy.
No BS, read it for yourself.
Time to petition for his treatments.
http://my.clevelandclinic.org/disorders/factitious_disorders/hic_munchausen_syndrome_by_proxy.aspx
Latest Russel Crow film Noah .More over hyped CGI Climate Change porn.Typical modern religious take dont dare even mention god.The main Character.
Lewandowsky very similar an Australian putting on a bad American accent
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMR_vaccine_controversy
“Observers have criticized the involvement of mass media in the controversy, what is known as ‘science by press conference’,[41] alleging that the media provided Wakefield’s study with more credibility than it deserved. ”
[41] Moore Andrew (2006). “Bad science in the headlines: Who takes responsibility when science is distorted in the mass media?” http://embor.embopress.org/content/7/12/1193
@ur momisugly Leo Geiger says:
April 17, 2014 at 5:32 am
You assert that Lew is simply talking about normal risk management.
You would be completely wrong.
Uncertianty means “we don’t know”.
We don’t know if weather is actually going to get worse in a world of increasing CO2.
We don’t know if sea levels are going to ise faster in the future than they have over the past ~100 years or so.
We don’t know if the ideas of the CO2 obsessed are implementable, much less if they will actually change the weather for the better.
(in fact we know they are not implementable and won’t help the weather, actually)
And on that basis lunatc Lew wants us poor citizens to stfu and let the pals he like run the world?
I don’t think so.
– – – – – – – – – –
Alan Robertson,
Lewandowsky and Oreskes have the same scripted message.
Lewandowsky’s message => the scientific community has become unduly focused on uncertainty & skeptical scientists are con$piracists causing it with motivated influences.
Oreskes’ message => the IPCC is way too conservative in assessing the dangers of CAGW & the IPCC is being influenced to reduce the assessment of danger by a con$piracy of fossil fuel interests fronted by skeptical scientists.
Michael Mann has adopted their scripts (mostly Oreskes’) when asserting his conspiratorial self-serving myths of being the victim of big fossil’s attempt to defame what he promotes as his planet saving work effort.
Oreskes is the intellectual originator of the three. Her original ideas have become their prototypical ideas. Lewandowsky and Mann are following her intellectual path.
John