Paul Burtwistle writes:
Last night I watched an item on Channel 9’s 60 minutes here in Australia which covered Dr Stefan Harrison of Exeter University in the UK and his work studying the Exploradores glacier in Patagonia, Argentina.
The story contained an alarmist view regarding the sudden increase in the rate at which the glacier is receding over the last 10-20 years. The documentary does explain that the glacier has retreated a lot over the last 20,000 years but that the rate of decrease is up to 50 times greater in the last 10-20 years that it was 500 years ago and this is all due to AGW (at 5 mins 26 seconds in to “Wild Patagonia part 2″).
At 5 minutes 40 seconds in to the item Dr Harrison asked about climate skeptics and he goes on to say that they are not worth debating their viewpoint as it’s “like mud wrestling with pigs. Firstly you get covered in mud and secondly, the pig loves it” he then goes on to say he won’t debate skeptics because geographers don’t debate with people who think the world is flat and biologists don’t debate with people who think evolution isn’t happening or that the world is only 6000 years old.
You can view the whole article here (2 x 8 minute items) – http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com.au/stories/8834229/wild-patagonia-the-glaciers-that-hold-a-dire-warning-for-earths-future .
The two articles are Wild Patagonia 1 & 2. I think some attention should be drawn to this appalling piece and I’ve already written to Channel 9 to voice my disapproval.
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Huh, I don’t know of ANY climate skeptic who thinks the world is flat or that the Earth is only 6000 years old. I wonder where he gets his information…The Daily Kos perhaps?
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I’m assuming that the good doctor would be delighted to take a pay cut of 60% by not accepting money from UK pigs.
So I emailed the doctor to ask whether as a taxpayer I had the honour of funding nonsense like this
“Dr Harrison also has research interests in the philosophy of physical geography. He has written on the ontology of quantum theory as an argument against realist philosophy in geography, and argued for the identification of emergent properties in landscapes as an alternative to the reductionist model-building paradigm.”
to be told that Dr. Harrison is on research leave. No doubt paid for by me and other UK taxpayers.
Beyond a joke. I fund him. He abuses me. How does that work?
” I don’t know of ANY climate skeptic who thinks the world is flat or that the Earth is only 6000 years old. I wonder where he gets his information”
That is not what he said. But you know that I guess.
Pity to harrison, – what chance would he have of continuing his lifelong junket if he said “nothing’s changed in Patagonia?”
If I may oynk . . .
Interesting that he’s talking about a retreat from glaciation maximum in Patagonia circa 1800, and elsewhere that the Cairgorms had gliacers in the Little Ice Age. I thought a fellow warmist had argued against the existece of a LIA . . . , or does Harrison regard him as a pig?
The ontology of quantum theory . . . oh dear, a geographer that’s read a book on Heisenburg
Love the way they are standing inside a large ice cave having a conversation about it’s impending collapse…. with absolutely no regard for personal safety. 🙂
6 minutes in…
She says … “Massive ice caves like this one [she’s standing in] can disappear before your eyes. ” … “Um, How long before you think this ceiling will collapse”
Stef says… “Might be a couple of days, uh, might be today I guess, as they are melting pretty quickly”.
It makes me think that he’s either dumb, dishonest or a combination of both.
Pete in Cumbria says:
April 28, 2014 at 5:56 am
Did anyone (else apart from me) follow or do the online climate Change course that Exeter held recently?
Yes Pete I signed for that as well, I lasted until about week 5, couldn’t take any more. The old hockey-stick trundled out, little or no mention of counter-evidence to climate catastrophe, amazing ignorance in basic geographical, geological and climate history judging from posted comments from what seemed to be an overwhelming majority of environmental ignoramuses and acceptance of the use of the term denier in comments posted. A generally depressing experience.
They are taking their cues from the evolution wars and trying to take what they hope will be perceived as the superior high ground. This is a different take on ad hominem attacks – it is a way of signaling that your opponent is so far off base they are not worth your time as a serious scientists. You have other, better things to do with your time – like save the planet.
It is a very effective method and it keeps them from having to actually enter into debates.
In the case of the evolution wars it was a justifiable tactic because one can not debate science against the bible, other than to say that the two are not equivalent models of understanding the world and unsuitable as a debate topic.
In the case of climate science, it is not acceptable because there is a lot of science which contradicts them and we want to debate science vs science, not science vs religion
Be that as it may, don’t take this lightly, It was a VERY effective tactic to the biological science community in shutting down a lot of press by the anti-evolution crusaders.
Evolution is happening now? What animals have we added to the zoo in my lifetime?
Well, I don’t know any flat-earthers, but I do know some people who believe the earth is a few thousand years old. Many of us are virtually acquainted with others through this website who don’t believe CO2 is a greenhouse gas or don’t believe the greenhouse effect exists.
What Dr. Harrison is trying to do is to take these extreme outliers and claim they represent the mainstream of the climate skeptic movement. I’m sure there is a known logical fallacy for this and it’s a tactic straight of the Rules for Radicals playbook.
Actually, biologists do debate against creationists and intelligent design proponents. Sorry if that upsets Dr. Harrison.
I think you might have gotten Dr. Harrison’s photo mixed up with the Unabomber’s photo.
Harrison commented at Climate Audit between 2005 and 2011 in a cordial way both in his own name and under the pseudonym san quintin. Some of his comments were not merely cordial, but complimentary:
Here are some of the threads on which he commented:
http://climateaudit.org/2005/06/28/full-true-and-plain-disclsoure-and-falsification/
http://climateaudit.org/2005/08/20/a-new-preprint-by-wunsch-on-abrupt-climate-change/
http://climateaudit.org/2009/02/08/gavin-on-mckitrick-and-michaels/
http://climateaudit.org/2009/01/07/unthreaded-2/
http://climateaudit.org/2009/09/03/kaufmann-and-upside-down-mann/
http://climateaudit.org/2009/06/11/cloud-super-parameterization-and-low-climate-sensitivity/
I thought that Harrison’s comments at Climate Audit were constructive.
In terms of the larger picture, I drew Harrison’s attention to (what I believed to be) the lack of an “engineering quality” exposition of the derivation of climate sensitivity in then IPCC documents. Harrison argued that such sensitivity was best shown in the paleoclimate record. I did not argue the opposite, but pointed out to him that the then current IPCC assessment (AR4) itself had not relied on or reported on this line of argument. Nor had they cited the two articles adduced by Harrison as support. I suggested to Harrison that he wrote a post on the topic for the CA audience (not that such a post would be an “engineering quality” exposition but it would be of interest.) He entertained the idea, but was busy and nothing happened.
His comments at CA diminished after Climategate, attenuating to none as resentfulness grew among the activist community in the Empire Strikes Back denouement to Climategate.
Here’s the real reason he won’t debate skeptics–because alarmist lose the debates.
Typical pro-warming academic. Spends their entire life telling gullible kids what to think without fear of being questioned or contradicted, who cannot stand it when they enter the real world on the internet where they find people who not only know more than him but aren’t afraid to say so.
Left is right and right is left!
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There are many insults on both sides, alarmists and skeptics, the firsts call other rightists and conservatives and the seconds instead.
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Analyzing strictly within the definition of left and right emerged in the French revolution, the right was conservative (monarchist) and did not want change, now left fighting for new (republic).
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Returning to the case of global warming, who’s left of the movement are the skeptics, who want to question the so-called “established science” and not think of the Earth as a garden of Eden immutable and should be kept well “ad infinitum”.
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From what is written above it is seen that the skeptics are left of scientific thinking, always looking for new answers to new problems, on the other hand alarmists and their associates, are conservative right-wing forces that do not want change.
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Soon the left is right and right is left in climate studies.
That comment is rich coming from Dr. Harrison who is the very image of Pig-Pen. Hint: Dude! Don’t make comments about pigs while having pictures of yourself looking like crap! Brush your hair, ake a shower, Shave! That would be a start. http://www.weirdspace.dk/CharlesSchulz/Graphics/Pig-Pen.gif
d18O records from ice cores into the Patagonian glaciers do not reach past the LIA because of the very rapid movement of these glaciers. There is high (.5+ meters) accumulation and the glaciers are relatively thin.
In the first segment noticed the following misdirection. In an ice cave, Harrison said that ice core records can provide information for three-quarters of a million years and expressed his frustration that a “wonderful archive” was “disappearing”, as water dripped in the ice cave. However, the three-quarters of a million year archives are from Antarctica and are not presently “disappearing”.
Further, if Harrison is worried about disappearing archives, then I urge him and other scientists (even Ellen Mosley-Thompson) to archive their own data, lest it become misplaced. Neither the NOAA archive (ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/) nor Pangaea (www.pangaea.de) contain a single ice core dataset from Patagonia.
Only a pig would suggest that skeptics of anthropogentic climate change are all Young Earth Creationists who believe the earth is flat.
To better understand Mr Harrison and others like him regarding debating skeptics we need to understand what he said and what he is really saying.
He said, “I won’t debate skeptics”
What he really said is “I won’t debate people who threaten my livelihood feeding at the public trough of AGW grant funding”.
So, just replace “skeptic” with “people who threaten my feeding at the public trough” and you’ll have an better understanding of what Climate “threateners” are really saying.
IMO he won’t debate with skeptics because he is already covered with mud, whereas the skeptics aren’t. And this will become obvious for everyone to see as a result of any debate.
It’s tough if’n you ain’t smarter than the pig, Prof.
Why is it that climate scientists take public funds, go out into the field and collect climate data, and then publish papers using the data, but DO NOT ARCHIVE the data?
It is almost as though they are afraid to let anyone else check their results. Instead, the public having paid for the data, get nothing in return but unverified papers that cannot be relied upon because they cannot be checked.
remember when you were in schools and were told SHOW YOUR WORK. Apparently climate science never got the memo.
Two climate sceptics that come to mind are Harrison Schmidt and Burt Rutan. One was the only scientist to walk on the moon and the other built the first aircraft to fly non-stop around the world. I seriously doubt if either of them believes the world to be flat.
Chris
This said, his point is absolutely correct, i.e. debating with skeptics will get him covered with mud (he already is, only people don’t notice), and the skeptics will definitely enjoy it.