Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Salon writer Paul Rosenberg has created a gem of an article in which he claims, that the right direction in which to accept climate risks is “180 degrees away from where so-called “common sense” would take you.”
The strange thing is Rosenberg argues this is a good thing – that only by rejecting so called “common sense” can you orient in the “right direction”, to understand and appreciate Lewandowsky’s argument about uncertainty and risk.
As far as I can tell from reading his article, “deniers” are apparently winning the battle for public opinion, because most people can’t perform this impressive feat of mental gymnastics. Only special people (I assume Rosenberg means the sort of people who regularly read his articles), people who understand and appreciate Lewandowsky, can attain the required mental flexibility to utterly reject common sense. Or something like that.
I’m looking forward to Rosenberg writing an article on why black is white, why you should throw a pinch of salt over your shoulder whenever a witch gives you the eye, and why we don’t need all those stinkin observations to do model based science.
Full article:
“Salon writer Paul Rosenberg on why “deniers” are winning”
The good news is i see more of these type of headlines and the MSM had nearly a 20 year start on alarmism before the internet fought back.
Don’t they know, the Tortoise always wins the race.
If you read the comments under that article you know common sense is that common.
sorry isn’t that common
goody
Elitists never stop trying to control others, the message and everything else. Facts don’t matter in bizarro-world, especially when facts are in short supply. How much climate science is being conducted with pre-determined conclusions, then just figuring out how to fill in the blanks afterward? After decades of being relatively unquestioned since people have a tendency to want to believe scientists and now that heretic skeptics and joe public are not swallowing the bilge hook, line and sinker, elitists want to shut down all discussion and debate or at least shut down skeptics asking questions.
‘During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act’ – George Orwell
I fear that we have met our match in this man, Stephan Lewandowski. His intellectual powers are formidable. He has in infiltrated our secret communications channels (public blog sites) and has discovered our true and most confidential plan: to restore the tobacco industry to its former glory. He is on to us and our mission has been compromised. I have been directed by the Surpreme Leader at Exxon Mobil to initiate the Stockholm Protocol. All cells must comply immediately. There is but one question: what’s the frequency, Kenneth?
(I know, I know, it was in the appendix to the World Domination meeting minutes from last fall. But I put them up on iCloud, and then when I upgraded to iOS7 all my files got meessed up. Maybe someone could email me the frequency).
I love some of the comments here and the references I will be checking out tomorrow night.
Thanks for great links all !
I have been a Environmental Inspector / Consultant for 25 years 5 years in Haz Mat prior to that and continuing so 30 years in Haz Mats
Green Peace wanted to ban Chlorine? (now big backers of co2 debate)
Sorry co2 is also not a Haz Mat
30,0000 ppm is level for 30 min exposure. Basically at those levels you will not have enough oxygen to breath, lungs cant make use of it properly
co2 does not cause cancer, nor does water the 95% of the greenhouse gas
Sun drives global temps PERIOD
Poles and ocean are Earths regulators Period
Greenhouse gasses feed our system and keep it stable
Cloud busting is Bull $%^& also, but people still believe in it? what?
“The Earth is Flat” We once had a scientific and public “Consensus” on that as fact
“the Sun revolves around Earth” We once had a scientific and public “Consensus” on that as fact
THANKS,
Mac the Knife says:
April 27, 2014 at 12:41 am
THANKS,
J. Philip Peterson says:
April 27, 2014 at 12:28 am
THANKS,
Colin says:
April 26, 2014 at 10:59 pm
Ian, how’s the head this morning?
That little lot made me laugh out loud!!
THANKS,
Head finally clearing up – No wonder I do not like to drink often – Ian Bach
Thanks,
“Christopher Hanley says:”
April 27, 2014 at 12:43 am
“They [Oreskes & Lewandowksy] are currently working together on a paper on the effects of denial on the scientific community …”
==================================================
Blair’s Law coined by Australian journalist Tim Blair:
“the ongoing process by which the world’s multiple idiocies are becoming one giant, useless force”.
Only special people (I assume Rosenberg means the sort of people who regularly read his articles), people who understand and appreciate Lewandowsky, can attain the required mental flexibility to utterly reject common sense.
The Emperor’s New Climate Theory?
and to quote Douglas Adams, “…goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.”
Just remember that without the silent P, Behavioural Psychology would have an acronym in common with something much closer to the truth. The P actually stands for purest. Its practitioners are all members of the ancient order of witch hunters and ducking stool operators. Mind your leg, Paul Rosenberg’s is obviously already wet.
“Ian, how’s the head this morning?”
It still made more sense than the warmists.
My Blog
I compiled the best of my Arguments and thought experiments
“WHy co2 is BS in 5 Data sets”
http://ianbachusa.wordpress.com/2014/04/27/why-co2-is-bs-in-5-data-sets/
I took all my best arguements and if you think made a decent post, pass on the link
if you like it let me know please thanks! – Ian Bach
HeHe thanks “Andrew” Head not hurting the sugar rush is what messes with me and my pancreas most.
‘Deniers’ are winning for one simple reason: Empirical data trumps bullshit.
Projection: S. Lewandowsky uses projection to project on to us skeptics all the bad stuff that he is doing. Blame transfer. Yeah, that Salon article is over the top nuts.
“…the right direction in which to accept climate risks is ‘180 degrees away from where so-called ‘common sense’ would take you.'”
Oh I get it, now he thinks telling the truth will work for them.
Excuse my language, i am not a native english speaker, so expect some errors 🙂
In my opinion this is kind of smart in my opinion, i have read a couple of articles about his papers here and on other blogs on the last few weeks. Including his rebutals and his response video.
It seems to me that at the current moment he is using “AGW” as a marketing tool, with himself as a product. I would like to point to http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/rfmedia.html his piece about the media attention he had received at that time. Also if you read the responses to people not finding the email from “him” he seemed to be very amused http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/ccc2.html.
Also one more point, in a response on http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/lewandowskyRecFury.html a certain “John Cook” (i suspect this is the john cook we al love and know) wrote:
John Cook at 11:05 AM on 6 February, 2013
No, this wasn’t conceived as a two part project – the intense reaction to LOG12 was not anticipated (although in hindsight, perhaps it should have been). What took us aback was the complete lack of self-awareness in those promoting the conspiracy theories.
So it seems that there was a pre conceived plan (yes you may call me a conspiracy theorist, after all i dont KNOW this but am making a assumption based on my judgement) and it seems that “we” fell for it.
After this he has been using his new found “celeb-status” to get airtime and use that to bash deniers.
It even got him his own wikipedia site, and as you can read it is only filled with info regarding this paper.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephan_Lewandowsky
Maybe somebody can explain to me why we regards this man as worthy of attention, since he neither does any work on climate nor was he high-profile. In my opinion this man is a non-issue and a detractor.
Regards,
Arnold
It’s the good old “credo quia absurdum”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credo_quia_absurdum
Why are not people like Rosenberg and Lew the Stew in an institution for the mentally diminished? 100 years ago that is where they would have found themselves.
When the ipcc was forced to acknowledge that there has been no global warming in 17 years there was a distinct radicalization of those whose livelihood or political views were dependent on a warming climate. The cold winter and rebound of artic ice has increased their radicalization and turned up the volume of their frustration. The term denier has been a scarlet letter to marginalize, that tactic seems to be losing steam .
While I view Rosenberg as basically a smart guy, he’s quite an ideologue. So much so, that he lapses into irrationality without being aware of it, or else he’s just plain dishonest (when it’s expedient to be so). He’s also not good at conceding errors.
You can view some arguments I had with Rosenberg at, when I had just recently opened my eyes to climate skepticism:
http://www.openleft.com/diary/20532/the-real-climate-fraudthe-socalled-skeptics
and
http://www.openleft.com/diary/20526/golden-oldie-a-deeper-look-at-global-warming-denialist-attacks
He’s hardly the only lefty who shows no interest in understanding the implications of tribalism, careerism, group think, etc., on scientific claims that happen to buttress some points of ideology and/or group ‘worthiness’ (“reality based community”, my foot!).
Also, he shows no interest in figuring out the nuances within the claimed 97% consensus. As you can see, I drew his attention to these non-trivial issues YEARS AGO.
But, he has an axe to grind, and grind it he will.
==========================
Somewhat off topic, but here goes:
IMO, sceptics are playing with fire, by assuming that the likes of Rosenberg, Lewandowsky and Oreskes can be ‘safely’ battled by climate blogs, occasional FOIA requests, etc. CO2 catastrophism is a PLUTOCRATIC agenda, and those guys seems to usually get their way. (Note how, e.g., the middle class of the United States was gutted in just 40 years.). Rosenberg, et. al., are either useful idiots, or else the equivalent of “go along to get along” Germans circa 1930’s.
If the plutocrats give them some power, and maintain the fiction that “the cause” is saving the world”, then don’t be surprised if you (as a skeptic) end up on the rack.
OK, we don’t do the rack anymore, we do waterboarding, tasing, and other more modern forms of torture. But the point remains: the CO2 catastrophism religion should be crushed, as not doing so might lead to some very nasty consequences. And that means educating the public, even without $$ from Exxon Mobil and the like.
And I do mean (in the Us) in blue states, not just red states.
If one believes this kind of nonsense they should immediately respond to those Nigerian emails. After all common sense tells you its a scam but we just can’t trust common sense. We could get rich.
Or, just run down to your local casino and gamble your life’s savings. There’s a lot of uncertainty in the outcome but you could become rich which would make your life much better. Can you take the risk to avoid this wonderful future?
Lew’s uncertainty papers have a supplemental that contains a supposed linear model of the relationship between temperature (T), transient climate response (TCR) and equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS, what Lew states ‘often called Charney sensitivity’???). This section appears to paraphrase and to torture what would be an introductory chapter of any elementary textbook on linear systems. e.g. Lew’s “effective time constant” is just the function centroid, his forcing F due to doubling CO2 is a simple ramp function imag(-ln x), why not say so? This is demonstrated by his vagueness of definitions; he states the lm can be “of any complexity”, ok, I choose C, a convolution operator ill-defined by Lew, to be C(t’) = (0 + 0i)t’ for all valid t’; this is linear and allowed by Lew’s specifications, it contains everything I know about the temperature response to system forcing. Oops, infinities!
Quote from the salon article:
When anyone says “new math…”, hoist the red flags. Really, ‘ordinal’ or ‘rank’ processing is new mathematics? More likely, he meant to say “we found a matlab function called ordinal that we haven’t known of or used before”.
Overall my impression is that Lewandowsky is playing parlour tricks by implementing a subtle variation of the bayesian doomsday argument, the original and mother of all hockey sticks. Not having read the paper, I am only guessing; the dead giveaway is his term ‘ultimate time scale’ at which, I assume, 100% of consequences (must) have occurred. Rank the consequences by their probability functions wrt to the temperature lm, by whatever method Lew chooses (the ranked probabilities will end up looking like a hockey stick). Now we don’t know what current rank of consequences we are at present nor the ultimate time; greater uncertainty implies we may have underestimated the current ranking, which means we are a lot closer to ultimate time (100% consequences) than we realise. The greater the ranking, the faster we approach catastrophe, hence the importance of greater uncertainty.
When someone renames or relabels familiar things so they appear to be new terminology, and then claims some familiar processes as ’new’, isn’t that the definition of a crackpot?
A Measure for Crackpots from 1962: Fred J Gruenberger http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2006/P2678.pdf
Memorable quotes from this 1962 article seem to have been specially written for all things climate science.
The more uncertainty there is, the more we should act. The more uncertainty there is, the more risk that things will turn out on the bad side and, therefore, the more reason we should act now. That is the logic I guess.
But how much uncertainty is there? Well, we don’t even know that much. We are completely uncertain about how much uncertainty there is.
We would normally call that situation a state of randomness.
If you look at the paleoclimate, that is exactly what the CO2 versus temperature history is. It is more-or-less a random set of correlations.
Here is a large set of CO2 versus temperature datapoints going back through history. It is just a random +40C to -40C per doubling. Normally I would call this no uncertainty because there is NO correlation. CO2 cannot possibly be +40C per doubling or -40C per doubling either.
Starting at 0-10,000 years ago, then to 200,000 years ago, then the past 5 million years, 25 million years, then 50 million, then 750 million.
http://s28.postimg.org/eucaualr1/CO2_sensitivity_last_10_Kys.png
http://s13.postimg.org/65wbml0p3/CO2_sensitivity_last_200_Kys.png
http://s23.postimg.org/3jnbzr9cb/CO2_sensitivity_last_25_Mys.png
http://s17.postimg.org/s2rwfp95r/CO2_sensitivity_last_50_Mys.png
http://s28.postimg.org/lovsbgt5p/CO2_sensitivity_last_750_Mys.png
This is the most observation points ever used, and it is not uncertainty, it is Zero correlation. Either that, or other factors have a much larger influence on the climate than CO2 does.
“180 degrees away from where so-called “common sense”
Atmospheric CO2 causes a warmer atmosphere = “Global Warming”.
“Global Warming” is a changed climate = “Climate Change”
“Climate Change” could be either cooling or warming, hence “Climate Change” could = “Global Cooling”.
Therefore, according to the Warmist/Alarmists, the warming caused by increased atmospheric CO2 is causing us to cool.
Yep, 180 degrees out from common sense.
🙂