Guest essay by Charles G. Battig, M.D.
A flurry of recent publication activity on the health impacts of carbon dioxide by the catastrophic climate change community is evidence that it has now moved beyond post-normal science. That was the philosophical answer to traditional science founded on rational hypotheses, reproducible experimentation, and impartial confirmation of results. Post-normal science was to be the answer to really difficult research problems; it would apply in cases where “facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent,” according to its advocates Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1991. Coincidentally, these same attributes accurately describe the status of climate research. Loosening the traditional standards of acceptable proof to include some postulating and science conclusions based on consensus and opinion would expand the universe of available answers desperately desired by governing bureaucrats and environmental activists.
Financial linkages between E.P.A. funded researchers and their reported influence on E.P.A. policy advocacy is a step beyond, and vindicates President Eisenhower’s admonition (1961):
“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
The community of man-made, climate-change catastrophe advocates has been smarting for lack of catastrophes. Droughts, tornadoes, sea level rise acceleration, coral reef sinking have all failed to increase dramatically on schedule, even as atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased about 10 per cent over the past eighteen years. Most annoying to the alarmists has been the plateau in global atmospheric temperatures over this same time period. They have proffered an array of imaginative excuses for the lack of observed global atmospheric temperature rise. No catastrophes means bad news for the United Nations plans for its Paris conference on climate mitigation and wealth transfer later this year. It would seem even more outrageous to the public at large to pay for a non-problem. The transfer of wealth from the developed nations to the less developed nations to combat a non-existent climate problem becomes that much more embarrassing without the drama attendant to scary numbers portending global disaster.
Just-in-time advocacy science has now produced a paper which claims to have the data to show that there has been no pause in the global temperature. The global fever has been there unabated all these eighteen years. It was hiding in a variety of data sets just waiting to be found, much like Michelangelo’s David hiding in a block of raw marble. Singer, Michaels, and others have analyzed the claims of the paper, and unlike David, what has been revealed is not a thing of scientific beauty, but a construct of dubious data doctoring portending that climate disaster is right on schedule.
I propose a new label for science papers which attempt to challenge established concepts by refashioning data banks to achieve a desired conclusion. Borrowing from the fashion world, I term such science efforts as “bespoke science.” Made-to-order…made to measure…made to fit the desired outcome by selective data trimming, adjusting, and stitching together. Be ready to see much more tailoring of data to fit the U.N. agenda as December approaches.
Charles G. Battig, M.S.,M.D., Piedmont Chapter president, VA-Scientists and Engineers for Energy and Environment (VA-SEEE). His website is www.climateis.com
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Thanks, Mr. Battig.
Here we are. Up sleet creek without a paddle.
That’s anthropogenic catastrophic global warming/climate disruption/climate change community. It loses something without the purported cause and community history.
Could not have said it better. Dr. Battig is RIGHT ON!
Anthony —
Global warming ‘hiatus’ challenged by NOAA. Heat-trapping emissions of Carbon dioxide were soaring. NOAA found the data constructed by them that shows hiatus in global temperature is due to inaccurate data and thus to remove hiatus in global temperature they made adjustments to data series of global temperature after 19 years of slumber. The hiatus has not occurred for the 1st time, it happened twice earlier. NOAA hasn’t bothered to look at satellite and radiosonde data series before attempting to mutilate the data. On the missing heat with 19 years hiatus, several theories were put forth in several top journals after peer-reviews by the so called eminent peers. Thus, with NOAA’s data cooking up, all those ‘peer-reviewed’ research publications in the so called top journals on ‘heat hiding in deep oceans’ have turned in to “Garbage”. Thus, the credibility of those scientists and journals are at stake!!! At the coming summit in Paris, UN must give top priority to pollution [water, air, soil & food] control over carbon dioxide as pollution has it impact already on life-forms on the Earth; and concentrate on natural variability in meteorological parameters and ecological changes that are of concern at local and regional scales. This will provide a better weather forecasting tools.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
It is easy to prove that the “global warming hiatus” is and is not happening, thus providing support of a bogus kind for the position of pseudoscientists of all stripes. There is not the need for “adjusting” the data after the example of the NOAA thus risking a stay in a federal penitentiary This is accomplished by mislabeling a mathematical relation to imply it is a functional relation when it is not functional. This relation is that one that our error-prone colleagues call the “global warming” in the context of the “hiatus” aka “pause.”
The good doctor knows this ‘made to order science’, this narrative is a neoplastic growth on the body politic. It has grown dysfunctionally, it has metastasized, it has invaded every organ and system of government and policy. Is the pathology ultimately consumptive, leading through cachexia to cadaverous, or will the body develop the will to sustain an immune response which will ultimately heal? I’d bet on the resilience of the body politic. Nature trumps Narrative.
Hey, Doc; in the film version aliens supply the anti-serum.
================
Bespoke, you say? Make mine an off- the- rack Brioni of a dataset, the good old RSS.
Documentary film of tireless and brave comrades at NOAA dutifully saving the world from poisonous CO2:
http://youtu.be/oe9I0QhV08w
Not only that, chocolate rations are up, too!!!!
A visit to the petrol station for chocolate and fuel may become more expensive if proposed revisions to European financial market rules are implemented, industry executives have warned.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ae3910d0-0acd-11e5-98d3-00144feabdc0.html
Chocolate rations are up.
Comrade Simon– Yes, our brilliant and courageous EU central planners are considering putting restrictions on commodity futures trading.
The glorious US Ministry of Food shows the wonderful results of its 1958 ban on onion futures trading vs. evil crude oil price stability (with evil futures trading):
http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/onionsoil4.jpg
This is just further empirical evidence showing our glorious central planners must fix ALL commodity prices for the common good, in the same manner they “fixed” our temperature records!
Remember, comrade Simon:
War is Peace!
Freedom is Slavery!
Ignorance is Strength!
National Energy Board correct link…. neb-one.gc.ca, not neb-one-gc.ca /mark
Climate Change: Sunglasses, hat and coat. Problem solved.
It all started with the fall of the Berlin Wall when nascent political and ideological threats were emerging and ‘traditional’ academic disciplines began searching for new languages, tools and answers to their interdisciplinary problems-
http://web.archive.org/web/20130408215829/http://www.pacinst.org/publications/20th_anniversary/page2.html
Basically lefties needed to be sustainable in their darkest hour so they morphed into watermelons and bespoke their new jingoistic paradigm to cover up their past ideological bankruptcy. It’s worked a treat but it’s falling apart as usual, because while compassionate seeming and utopian dreams work for a while, their doing relies on measurable, accountable outcomes.
Walter Russell Mead nailed them all some time ago-
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/2010/07/12/the-big-green-lie-exposed/
Yup. Something for climate voyeurs.
“The transfer of wealth from the developed nations to the less developed nations to combat a non-existent climate problem”
The transfer of wealth from poor people in developed nations to rich people in less developed nations to combat a non-existent climate problem.
there fixed it for you.
gbee makes an important clarification. Transfer of wealth to the smaller economies of the world can only happen legitimately through trade.
Aid ensures that the worst in the society rise to the top to get that easy money rolling around. Trade rewards the ones who really produce something.
Trade not aid.
“stitch-up science”, another fashion metaphore. Both science and us are being stitched up.
“Intellectual Impostures” by Alan Sokal.
A message from NOAA to the policy makers of planet earth.
It has come to our attention that a small number of people have begun to notice that a range of datasets show no significant global warming since 1997.
It certainly is very worrying that nothing especially worrying has so far happened.
We hereby wish to explain that our own data-set could be made to show some slight warming since 1997 if we messed about with how we interpreted temperatures of the ocean derived from buoys and ship intakes.
Back in the 1980’s and 1990’s we kick started the alarm by exaggerating the cold in the early century, exaggerating the warmth of the 1990’s and by suppressing the naughty 1940’s blip.
However, we would like everybody to know that if we now do another bunch of messing, then some the warmth of the early 1900’s pop’s back but we can get a bigger rise since the 1990’s.
The first “interpretation” was really only intended to panic the people of the 1990’s.
This new interpretation may help you to panic the people of 2015.
We hereby submit our hiatus killing variant, for approval. We hope that you like it.
There is some other shit that we could possibly adjust in the future, but we don’t want to do all the adjustment in one go, because then our data won’t match Hadley, RSS, UAH, Argo or the Radiosondes. And then maybe the smarter liberals will start asking awkward questions.
Wishing you all the best with your plans for reshaping the world economy.
Eternally your servants, Karl et al.
P.S. Thanks for all the grant money. We spent it on really cool stuff.
There is a better description than ‘Bespoke Science’ – ‘Fraud’
When you start by tampering with the data that is no more science than the ‘Find The Lady’ trick
This seems like a perversion of the old high-risk, low-probability scenario. The question asked is whether it is worth the cost mitigating a potentially severe problem even though it is unlikely or unclear. The answer is usually based on cost amount. Spending $1000 @ur momisugly month for life insurance for most young couples is not reasonable, $30 may be a more acceptable mitigation against the risk, and for some their budget and priorities does not support spending for an unlikely but catastrophic life event.
With life insurance death is certain, time of death is uncertain and costs are balanced against that uncertainty. With climate science both the timing and type of catastrophic event is uncertain. And of course climate science irresponsibly ignores cost.
Post-normal science sounds a lot like “chicken-little the sky is falling” science.
Post-normal science sounds a lot like “chicken-little the sky is falling” science.
Agreed, the principles of or for Post Normal Science are actually only mental states generally expressing or trying to induce panic: “facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent…” lead directly to “Bespoken Science” because of the panic, which necessarily and even admittedly abandons the principles of Real Science in favor of…Lo and behold!…Pronouncements by the self-anointed Elites, many of whom have just conveniently come to occupy positions of power within our Institutions and are bolstered by their Flocks of willing and congenital ignoramuses. The latter comprise a group I’ve been calling “Perfect Totalitarian Fodder” because they seem to need and even crave a system which gives them enough “On Authority” certainty in many important areas, real and fabricated from reality in some way, so that they can live life comfortably in so far as not having to think about them.
Dear Alx,
I do agree with your last sentence:- Post-normal science sounds a lot like “chicken-little the sky is falling” science.
Re: Post-Normal Science (PNS) – February 2003. (by S.Funtowicz and J. Ravetz).
I have just clicked onto the “link” – http://isecoeco.org/pdf/pstnormsc. pdf –
which was kindly provided here yesterday in the comment posted by Reality Observer.
The ten pages of self-righteous gobble-de-gook by Messrs. Funtowicz and Ravetz are CONVOLUTED beyond description ! (It has also NOT been proof read by the authors).
I rather fancy that they were both paid a very large sum of money for their so-called PNS definition, by the “European Commission Joint Research Centre” (note the spelling of Centre) and I expect the MONEY came from the coffers of the European Union.
Now, I admit that I haven’t seen “Star Wars” (or whatever it is) and I may well be a little behind the times (my Hungarian valve steriogram – record player still works nicely everyday) but I assure you that I am literate and I also know where the rats live.
My thanks to Reality Observer: his words are most appropriate “Targeting, targeting – fire!” and may I say, the life assurance situation you describe is indeed spot on.
Regards,
WL
On behalf of sceptics everywhere thank you Karl for your latest offering. You have no idea , i suspect , how pleased we are with it .
You have demonstrated that for the past 20 years global warming has not been in stasis as so many of your colleagues believed , but in gradual progression . At the same time of course , food crop yields have increased , hurricanes decreased, the arctic ice loss has stabilised , the Sahel has become greener and life in Northern europe winters is more comfortable.
In short there is nothing to fear about AGW but , to quote a distinguished compatriot of yours : “fear itself”.
In fact for some of us if this what a little AGW does , lets have some more of it please.
Thank you also Indefatigable frog for allowing me to pass on this message. .
The IPCC’s global warming supposition is dependent entirely upon the concept of ‘atmospheric greenhouse effect’ and the IPCC’s fabrication of “back-radiation”.
But why are these concepts held on a pedestal, as indisputable scientific fact, when these term do not even occur in any fundamental work involving thermodynamics, physical kinetics, or radiation theory?
This is not science as scientists have come to accept under the scientific method. This is pseudo-science … Mickey Mouse science …. and it should have no place in the field of science.