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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To Do list 4-28-2014 Stephan Harrison
-Take a bath
-Thoroughly wash hair
-Shave properly
-Take a double dose of laxative to remove grimace from face
-Visit Psycologist again
-Apply for research grant from Lewandowski et al
I started the Exeter climate change course. Pure propaganda: the only way to score high on the quiz was to repeat the mantra of Global Warming back at them. A sickening experience, funded by the taxpayer.
“like mud wrestling with pigs. Firstly you get covered in mud and secondly, the pig loves it”
But he sees no harm in remaining at a safe distance and slinging mug. That way you don’t risk loosing and being made to look like a fool by the pig.
Cowardice and hypocrisy more like.
“The ontology of quantum theory . . . oh dear, a geographer that’s read a book on Heisenburg”
Apparently he hasn’t read that the consensus is that quantum mechanics has no significant impact on the macro-scale world of which geology is one of the macro-est.
When people who run away from a fight it’s usually because they are scared of losing, not because they are afraid their opponent will enjoy being beaten up.
Really, does he imagine that no one in the adult world can see through his pathetic excuses?
The trouble with a lot of these academics is that they are so used to being surrounded by impressionable teenagers, who look up at them in awe, that they start to imagine the whole worlds population is that ill-informed and naive.
Us ‘pigs’ seem to be intellectually thriving due to the failure of CAGW theory whereas the alarmed ‘lemmings’ created by that theory are about to intellectually jump off the old proverbial cliff.
Us ‘pigs’ are a benevolent species though, we will protect a pair of the intellectuals who gave birth to the CAGW scare story. We will provide the two an opulent safe house somewhere in Hollywood, the home of modern fiction. Us ‘pigs’ would do this lest their intellectually alarmist species goes intellectually extinct. I suggest the protected pair of intellectuals who helped cause the CAGW alarmed ‘lemmings’ be either Mann and Lewandowsky or Pachauri and Oreskes.
If the later pair is chosen they might collaborate to write a smutty book about us redoubtable ‘pigs’ greased up by old fossilized merchants.
‘pigs’ is ‘pigs’
John
“Apparently he hasn’t read that the consensus is that quantum mechanics has no significant impact on the macro-scale world ”
You are mistaken. Heisenburg principal does apply to climatology:
The greater your uncertainty of the energy of the climate system, the more certain you can be of your position.
This was clearly stated to be the case in AR5 SPM.
Lewandowsky and SkS.
There aren’t thousands of peer reviewed papers published on the science of a flat earth. There aren’t thousands of peer reviewed papers published on creationist biology,
BUT
there are thousands of papers challenging the orthodoxy of CAGW and AAGW.
That’s nonsense.
Biologists like nothing better than to debate with creationists because they can, and do, take each piece of “evidence” from the creationists and show why it is either false or wrongly interpreted.
Now, if the biologist thought his theory so weak that he could never destroy the creationist argument then he might well avoid debate. Hmmm.
Magma says:
April 28, 2014 at 5:35 am
Seems reasonable.
See, Magma, it’s like this: any old excuse will do. If this one didn’t work, Harrison would just fall back on another excuse. Bottom line: he’s afraid to debate.
Read the first post in this thread, by ConfusedPhoton. Excellent analysis.
Harrison is a coward. He is afraid to debate. It’s a defining trait of alarmist scientists. Name one who will man up and engage in a fair public debate. They’re all cowards.
‘Cats look down on us, dogs look up to us but pigs treat us as equals’ quote WS Churchill
Exeter is a first rate University. They are however somewhat influenced by the nearby Met Office who fund a climate chage chair there. Dr Harrison is located at the somewhat out of the way Cornwall campus of the University.
He seems to have an activists view of things which obviously colours his opinions;. THis from his cv
* An invited member of the Carbon Counting Group, an international group of economists, scientists, architects, politicians and environmental activists working in the field of mitigation and adaption for climate change.
* An invited member of the Climate Justice Programme
*An expert witness for the Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide looking at the impact of mining on mountain glaciers in the Chilean Andes, and specifically the Pascua Lama mine.
So he is not a run of the mill Geography academic.
tonyb
They got clobbered in these two classic Intelligence Squared debates:
http://intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/past-debates/item/559-global-warming-is-not-a-crisis
http://intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/past-debates/item/607-major-reductions-in-carbon-emissions-are-not-worth-the-money
[Note: the most recent debate was 2009. ~mod]
why is it that all these nut cases resemble ted kascyzinski?
In an example of Glacial National Park in the U.S., the rate of glacial retreat near the end of the 20th century doesn’t stand out compared to
other times since the end of the Little Ice Age, such as during the early 20th century: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USGSglacierssince1850.jpg
“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”
While not specifically that Argentine site, 500 years ago, around 1514 A.D., was a time of only a moderate retreat rate for South American Andes glaciers (and many others), but there have been far faster times of glacial retreat (naturally) as seen in the bottom of Figure 2 on page 3 of Kirkby’s http://arxiv.org/pdf/0804.1938v1.pdf . (The 50 times faster is still a fishy claim, though, unless there is some unusual local factor which would have jack to do with present global climate change, which is more global cooling than warming since the 1998 El Nino, i.e. http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1998/plot/rss/from:1998/trend ).
There is an old saying that “arguing with an auditor is like wrestling a pig in mud…..sooner or later you are going to realize that the pig enjoys it”. Auditors on occasion do useful things such as offering an opinion on whether financial statements can be relied upon.
Steve McIntyre says:
Harrison commented at Climate Audit between 2005 and 2011…
He didn’t learn much, did he?
That he considers that scepticism is a ‘bad thing’ shows he is no scientist at all, for without it you’re not doing science, but preaching a religion or political message of perfect and unquestionable ‘truth’ that is above challenge.
I wonder if he knows a friend of mine who works in Exeter Uni in Exeter itself. She is really sensible but technically & scientifically ignorant. She was telling me how she worked with a AGW scientist colleague who believed in the 97% consensus, so it had to be right!
Dr Harrison reminds me of a conversation I sat in on 16 years ago between an architect, who had studied in the School of Architecture in Plymouth Uni, & a structural engineer I was working for. The architect, was explaining that lecturing & technical staff in the SoA, were employed on the basis that they only had friends & associated with those in the architectural profession, lest their minds be contaminated by association with mere mortals who were not architects!!!! Sounds ideal for an all round education to face the rigors of life outside academia!
Ontology of Quantum physics? As I understand the basis of quantum physics, there is NO ontological explanation. It all goes back to the quantum froth.
Sometimes a simile can be more telling of the speaker than his subject…
Vince – “That’s nonsense.” Some biologists Do debate creationists. The party line however is to avoid the debate because it is unwinnable as you will never convince your opponent AND it only draws attention to THEM, which is what they want.
‘Debating skeptics is like mud wrestling with pigs’
ok but what do you mean exactly?
you mean it is very hard? dirty? i don’t see the point…
did he ever wrestle with pigs in mud already..if not…
and you know what debating with anthonny watts is like debating with hitler, both are human being and both have drak hair and both have moustache…..
The horribly worn out “pigs” cliche is a measure of the luddishness of the brain. We had an old soc-ialist politician (Party Leader) come back out of retirement to run in a shoo-in riding. He showed the state of his sclerotic brain by shouting the one about the golden rule, he who makes the rules gets the gold. That pretty well showed everyone his antediluvian mind had few neurons left to pass messages along.