NOTE: In this essay, commenters have noted that Dr. Tim Ball used a rhetorical device in this sentence:
“The following is a possible email from John Holdren, Obama’s Science Czar, to bureaucrat Karl, or at least to his boss, at NOAA.”
Had I seen the word “possible”, I would not have allowed the subsequent paragraph where Dr. Ball outlined a “possible” email. While I understand what he was trying to do, this is just wrong, and I apologize to readers that this rhetorical device even exists in this essay, because it opens the possibility that somebody may interpret this as a real email.
UPDATE: This article has been revised and updated, and Dr. Tim Ball writes: Here is an extensive revision of my article to replace the one that caused so much grief.
The current article as of 7PM PDT 6/16/15 has been fully updated.- Anthony Watts
UPDATE2: 6/17/15 9:20AM PDT Dr. Ball adds via email with request it be posted here:
I wish to thank Anthony for the opportunity to rewrite the original article. It is no excuse, but I let my views color my judgment. It was triggered by the claim on the White House web site that “The weather is getting more extreme.” Evidence does not support this claim, as I believe the President’s Science Advisor should know. The [rhetorical] device used to draw attention to this was inappropriate.I have always said that if I am wrong about the global warming/ climate change issue as presented by the IPCC then I must be the first to publicly say so. It is important that I maintain a credible voice to continue to confront misuse of climatology and climate science.
Guest Opinion by Dr. Tim Ball
One dictionary defines Modus Operandi (MO) as
…a particular way or method of doing something, especially one that is characteristic or well-established: the volunteers were instructed to buy specific systems using our usual modus operandi—anonymously and with cash.
Use of a nefarious example illustrates the predominant use of the term by criminal investigators. The recent publication of an article by Karl et al. (2015) Possible artifacts of data biases in the recent global surface warming hiatus (paywalled) appears to fit the modus operandi of official climate science, at least since the 1995 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Several analyses and comments outline the serious problems and contrived nature of the article. Bob Tisdale addressed his comments to the lead author, Thomas Karl, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center. Tisdale concluded,
“The results of the statistical methods used on the earlier version of the NOAA sea surface temperature data (ERSST.v3b) did not provide the results NOAA was looking for now, so NOAA/NCEI, under your direction, mixed and matched methods until they found the results you wanted (ERSST.v4).”
He cited Judith Curry’s conclusion.
“This new paper is especially interesting in context of the Karl et al paper that ‘disappears’ the hiatus. I suspect that the main take home message for the public (those paying attention, anyways) is that the data is really uncertain and there is plenty of opportunity for scientists to ‘cherry pick’ methods to get desired results.”
I disagree with Curry’s conclusion, even for “those paying attention”. Very few know about the problems with leather bucket, metal bucket, and ship water intake temperature measures. Most don’t know how cherry picking the start and end of a graph is central to official climate science. The point Tisdale and Curry miss is that Karl et al., don’t care. All they want is a headline that removes the hiatus from the debate. They know the media and public don’t understand. They also know it’s easy to counter by calling challengers deniers. The article and its timing are in the sequence or modus operandi of the IPCC and the proponents of anthropogenic warming (AGW), at least since 1995.
The first example of the MO of finding the science or scientists to provide support for the global political agenda started with selection of James Hansen to appear before a 1988 Senate Hearing. As former US Senator Timothy Wirth said in PBS Frontline interview.
We knew there was this scientist at NASA, you know, who had really identified the human impact before anybody else had done so and was very certain about it. So we called him up and asked him if he would testify. Now, this is a tough thing for a scientist to do when you’re going to make such an outspoken statement as this and you’re part of the federal bureaucracy. Jim Hansen has always been a very brave and outspoken individual.
The transition from the 1990 Report to the 1995 Report marked a shift from reasonable science to directed science. Both Reports worked from the UNFCCC definition of climate change that restricted them to only human causes. However, the decision to restrict the definition caught up with the scientific method. Because they chose to prove the hypothesis rather than disprove it, they ran into contradictory data and evidence. The situation caused Richard Lindzen, an atmospheric physicist and former Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to comment that the consensus was reached before the research had even begun. It also eliminated the possibility of the null hypothesis that something other than human activity was the cause of global warming.
The AGW hypothesis developed around the idea that the highest temperatures in the record occurred in the latter part of the 20th century. The deception is in the focus on the modern instrumental record. A few scientists pointed to warmer temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) a thousand years before the instrumental record and approximately 800 years before the Industrial Revolution. They also identified the lack of a discernible human signal in the record. Both problems appeared in the 1990 Report, the MWP as part of Figure 7c (Figure 1), and the latter in commentary.
Figure 1
The IPCC essentially had two options, acknowledge the evidence and adjust their science or refute it. They chose the latter and took the first steps in the modus operandi that led to the Karl et al., article.
No technique existed to eliminate the MWP when the 1995 Report appeared. They focused on the lack of a discernable human influence issue. They achieved this through the amendments made to Chapter 8. The IPCC committee under Chapter 8 Lead Author Benjamin Santer, a graduate of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU), wrote,
· “None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed [climate] changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gases.”
· “While some of the pattern-base discussed here have claimed detection of a significant climate change, no study to date has positively attributed all or part of climate change observed to man-made causes.”
· “Any claims of positive detection and attribution of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the total natural variability of the climate system are reduced.”
· “While none of these studies has specifically considered the attribution issue, they often draw some attribution conclusions, for which there is little justification.”
The sentences Santer placed in the Report said,
· “There is evidence of an emerging pattern of climate response to forcing by greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosols … from the geographical, seasonal and vertical patterns of temperature change … These results point toward a human influence on global climate.”
· “The body of statistical evidence in chapter 8, when examined in the context of our physical understanding of the climate system, now points to a discernible human influence on the global climate.”
In 2006 Avery and Singer wrote,
“Santer single-handedly reversed the ‘climate science’ of the whole IPCC report and with it the global warming political process! The ‘discernible human influence’ supposedly revealed by the IPCC has been cited thousands of times since in media around the world, and has been the ‘stopper’ in millions of debates among nonscientists.”
The situation required a peer-reviewed article to establish Santer’s credibility. It appeared rapidly (July, 1996) in the journal Nature with the title “A Search for Human Influences On the Thermal Structure of the Atmosphere” authored by Santer, Wigley, Jones, Mitchell, Oort and Stouffer.
Research designed to confront the MWP did not appear until the 2001 IPCC Report. David Deming revealed they were working on the problem. In a letter to Science he wrote,
“With the publication of the article in Science [in 1995], I gained significant credibility in the community of scientists working on climate change. They thought I was one of them, someone who would pervert science in the service of social and political causes. So one of them let his guard down. A major person working in the area of climate change and global warming sent me an astonishing email that said “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.”
Most of the story about creation of the “hockey stick” that eliminated the MWP is extensively documented. The hockey stick actually promoted three misperceptions for the public. It eliminated the MWP and the Little Ice Age (LIA) in the handle of the stick, which accentuated the upturn in temperature of the 20th century temperature record. All three were false, but necessary to the objective of showing that current climate conditions were exceptional.
Ironically, the hockey stick eliminated a bump in the temperature graph but the next problem was no bump. Temperatures leveled starting after 1998, but CO2 levels continued to rise. The response by AGW people followed the MO by changing names from global warming to climate change instead of correcting the science.
The President is promoting climate change as the greatest threat to the world. A major challenge to his agenda is the hiatus or pause in temperature increase for the last 18 years. It is as big a hindrance to this agenda as the MWP was to the IPCC agenda. Attacks on the MWP included production of the hockey stick but also personal attacks on Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas. They produced an article “Proxy climatic and environmental changes of the past 1,000 years” with extensive proof of the existence of the MWP. John Holdren, Obama’s Science Czar, helped in the attack.
In an email on October 16, 2003 to Michael Mann and Tom Wigley he wrote:
“I’m forwarding for your entertainment an exchange that followed from my being quoted in the Harvard Crimson to the effect that you and your colleagues are right and my “Harvard” colleagues Soon and Baliunas are wrong about what the evidence shows concerning surface temperatures over the past millennium. The cover note to faculty and postdocs in a regular Wednesday breakfast discussion group on environmental science and public policy in Harvard’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences is more or less self-explanatory.”
Here is what he, Holdren wrote to the Harvard Wednesday Breakfast group:
“I append here an e-mail correspondence I have engaged in over the past few days trying to educate a Soon/Baliunas supporter who originally wrote to me asking how I could think that Soon and Baliunas are wrong and Mann et al. are right (a view attributed to me, correctly, in the Harvard Crimson). This individual apparently runs a web site on which he had been touting the Soon/Baliunas position.”
Holdren would understand the need for peer-reviewed research to show there is no hiatus and temperatures continue to rise. As he wrote to the person questioning his views on the Soon and Baliunas article,
“But, in practice, burden of proof is an evolving thing—it evolves as the amount of evidence relevant to a particular proposition grows.”
The evidence is evolving but it is showing the hypothesis is wrong. The solution all along was to counter with inaccurate information. The President exemplified the problems on the White House web page with the false statement that, “The weather is getting more extreme.”
Thomas Karl’s article is another example of the MO of the IPCC and its adherent’s willingness to produce science to fit the political need. Curry’s claim that the public takeaway is that the data is uncertain with a high cherry picking potential misses the point. The real point is that the data chosen and how it was handled are so inappropriate they would fail a first-year climate class paper. How it ever got through peer review is a disturbing mystery, except it is climate science and peer review was never a roadblock. It is so wrong that there is only one conclusion based on the MO it was created to eliminate problematic evidence, namely the hiatus. Ironically, the hiatus is giving AGW proponents a hernia.
M.O. was also made popular on 1950’s cop shows to describe certain patterns of criminal behavior
Mark
I don’t get it, what are you trying to say?
(sarc)
and neither should anyone else, everyone move along, there’s nothing to see here
So, deliberate fraud, then. Maybe you guys need to call these people out with a ‘Comment’ piece? Not just aimed at WUWT readers, but for a wider audience. What these people are doing is (imo) criminal.
I’ve said for years ‘fraud’ is the word. Not ‘hoax’.
Regarding,
The following is a possible email from John Holdren, Obama’s Science Czar, to bureaucrat Karl, or at least to his boss, at NOAA.
————–
Email from Holdren to Karl:
Subject: The Hiatus.
Creating a fake quote and intermixing it with many actual quotes seems likely to confuse the issue. Opponents are going to copy just the fake quote section and accuse you of making stuff up. A few people may not scan carefully enough (looking just at the quotes for example) and mistakenly believe its a real quote.
It confused me.
It confused me too, because the little word “possible” is overlooked rather easily by a hurried ready of this long posting.
(According to the quote “The following is a possible email from John Holdren, Obama’s Science Czar, to bureaucrat Karl, or at least to his boss, at NOAA.”)
Given that such an (not unlikely) email would be a huge scandal and a second climate-gate affair, one should not play easily which this sort of alleged pseudo-evidence. So my advice is: Remove it or make its hypothetical character clearer.
The motto of the CAGW skeptics has always been “Just the facts”. Let’s keep it that way…
Oops – Sorry: I meant of course “hurried readers”…
I was confused. Besides, any fake quotes is what the other side does. Erase it, now, please.
agreed, the article does not need fake quotes.
Agreed. Reality is outrageous enough. In my case, outrage set in back in August 2007, before I even became aware of the existence of a new site called WUWT. I blew a gasket when Climate Audit forced Hansen to readjust and then re-readjust GISS data. http://climateaudit.org/2007/08/08/a-new-leaderboard-at-the-us-open/
The more a person needs to tweak and “adjust” raw data to make it “fit”, the deeper they are wading into the quicksand of distorted reality. To have watched this go on and on and on for eight years has blown my gaskets so often I now must buy new gaskets by the case.
I don’t blame Dr. Tim Ball for venting some spleen with a parody of a government quote. It offers relief to the old gaskets. (I wish it hadn’t been removed before I got to chuckle over it.) However the readers who object are likely correct. We should stick to the truth.
The reality of what certain Alarmists have done, and continue to do, is both a bad joke and an outrage, and will be a truth in its own right, staining their names for all time.
I had the same reaction, Holdren’s email is hypothetical, not factual. While I believe Tim Ball is spot-on in his assessment, the presentation here is confusing, and could be construed as deliberately misleading or lying. Perhaps an update could clarify?
My reaction to the Karl2015 headlines was that we are going to hear from now on how the science has been settled and there never was a hiatus, regardless of all the contradicting evidence. It made the headlines, therefore it becomes “true”. Which is exactly why they first publicized it in press releases to selected individuals.
Anthony’s article http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/06/14/despite-attempts-to-erase-it-globally-the-pause-still-exists-in-pristine-us-surface-temperature-data/ provides the best refutation there is. Using their own data from USCRN, the best record there is with no adjustments or guessing, the “pause” is obvious. The only drawback is that it’s not global, just the US.
Yeah, took me a while to sort it out. Maybe format it more clearly?
I agree. There should be a better way to distinguish real quotations from hypothetical text. Borderline behavior.
John and others. When you have been treated, over decades, as ‘they’ have treated Dr Ball, both his personal life and his work, then you can get on a high horse about some floridity in complaints made about ‘their’ “work”.
they/their=TheTeam
Henry: Yeah that’s how being attacked makes anyone feel, but one has to resist the temptation to respond emotionally. In fact when you are mad, it’s more important than any other time to be careful about how you present your case.
It’s kinda hard to tell the fake emails from the real ones. Which, I take, is the point.
Thomas Court:
Careful now. It’s not a fake quote, it’s a quote product resulting from the adjustment and interpolation of quote data from unreliable instruments of speech. As this is only used for projections, and not predictions, it is not and does not claim to be a scientifically valid quote whether past, present, or future. It is simply a quote scenario that demonstrates the need for better message communication and more research on the increasing hyperbole trends in global quote records.
It’s a quote proxy reconstruction.
May I quote you on that?
It’s “Fake but Accurate” which Dan Rather assures us is in the best journalistic tradition.
(Do I need the /sarc tag?)
Yes, I missed the “possible” quote too. Pretty bad practice, putting words into someone else’s mouth and doing “possible” false quotations.
This is why I have learnt to treat most of Tim Balls post as, well, b…s
Karl et al was based on continuing to use NMAT to “correct” SST after 1945, here is what NMAT tells us about the ‘pause’.
Funny that.
HadSST3, NMAT2, UAH TLT , RRS , USCRN , UAH TLS, precipitation ……. all show a pause
The only thing that does not show a pause is the exponential increase in BULLSHIT emanating from the alarmists.
Count me in on the “That wasn’t a real quote or was it?” issue.
Agreed. It was a mistake to put this fake email in the piece, even though there was a mild warning that it was fake.
In other words, what we are dealing with is out-in-the-open deliberate, intentional, fraud. And they know it.
There are NO honest players left on the “other side” now – the incident with Revkin should have made that clear, once and for all.
“The point Tisdale and Curry miss is that Karl et al., don’t care. All they want is a headline that removes the hiatus from the debate.”
Agree 100%. Not knowledgeable in sciences, but any normal human that has a knowledge of human history can spot propaganda in a heartbeat. The Skeptics have won the battle on science, but although that is important, it is only a specific battle. Since funds are unlimited with a political agenda, the real war is won or lost with the battle on public perception.
Guiding Perception though is the entire focus of the global K-12 educational reforms known as the Common Core or competency education in the US. With the new Next Generation Science Standards pushing DCIs–selected disciplinary core ideas and CCCs–cross-cutting concepts–to guide perception to make future manipulation easier, this is a problem that will only get worse until it is better recognized.
http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/collecting-student-data-to-practice-psychopolitics-on-a-massive-but-invisible-scale-without-consent/ references the UNESCO doc laying out using K-12 education to foster desired beliefs to accomodate the sustainability global agenda. We are seeing from the UN and adopted by major funders like the National Science Foundation a comparable view of the physical sciences as what was held in the USSR in the 30s and 40s. If the facts will not submit to political power and will in favor of useful theories, then the facts need to be purged.
Robin: Not only is AGW emanating from the UN, but you are correct with UNESCO. People roll their eyes when ‘conspiracy’ is mentioned, but it is very real with the UN and its Agenda 21.
Kind of like throwing a statement in front of a Jury which the Judge subsequently tells them to ignore…
It’s headlines in the paper and a speaking point for politicians. Nothing more. As with the claim of 2014 being “the hottest year EVAAAA!”, the information was packaged to dovetail with the POTUS’ State of the Union Address a week later. Most people don’t care if the information wasn’t accurate. The POTUS could quote a “study”. The “study” could be proved inadequate later, but the speech had been made; the damage done. The media wasn’t going to bother printing a retraction or withdrawal. And now it’s just ramping up for Paris, which is looking more and more like a desperate effort to regain control of public attention and concern and re-energize the global fear promotion.
If the hypothesis of CAGW were to be disproved, which I see as unlikely because much of its claims are not falsifiable; or if in the alternative the public simply loses interest, which already seems to be happening, I wonder what the next existential threat to humanity will be? I want to get in at the beginning so I can cash in and depart the party early, leaving the hangers-on scraping the bottom of the punch bowl for the last watered down dregs.
The need for salvation through penitence, self-flagellation, and the exorcism of demons has been around since that snake started handing out apples, probably long before. This is just its current manifestation.
If temperatures start falling, which many people feel is likely, they will probably switch to global cooling again and blame it on particulate emissions. Both from combustion and any and all economic activity.
We must eliminate coal plants, diesel engines, farming and anything else that produces particulates or dust.
DO IT FOR THE CHILDREN!!!!!
Hurricanes need warm water to develop so if CAGW was predicting more and stronger hurricanes, and that didn’t happen, in fact decreased except for adjectives that describe a cat 3 storm as ‘super’, can we infer that the temps are actually falling? The MWP and the LIA has to go away for CAGW because the temps and co2 levels don’t match. The explanation for the MWP and LIA was local and not world wide, which has been proven since both were world wide. CAGW response? Ignore it, this argument has already been settled. With all the things that CAGW have done, fraud looks more the case than being flawed.
I’ve made the same comment here many times, the “science” is produced not to further understanding, but to attempt to eliminate particular “inconvenient” facts that support the skeptical arguments. Doesn’t matter if the paper is so bad that it has to be withdrawn later (which seldom happens no matter how execrable the paper is, considering the biases of the journals), it serves the purpose of putting a propaganda meme out there that will be picked up and repeated ad infinitum, ad nauseaum, by AGW cultists and the press, and politicians. See the fact that we still have people claiming the hockey stick is accurate, that the 97% trope is true, etc.
Perhaps we should have a rating scale for such papers using instead of number of Pinocchios, number of Riefenstahls.
Confusing as to who actually said what to whom. Not good form.
I will agree with that, Louis. The quotes in the blog post by Tim Ball are very confusing indeed.
The faux Holdren email is not a good idea. I found myself wondering where it was found and looking for a source until I realized it was a literary device.
It’s better to stick to the facts.
This is how studies involving politically charged topics are done now. Jason O’Riley had an article in the WSJ on Wednesday, June 10, about a study of mass shootings. The study was done at the behest of the White House. The academics involved carefully chose a time period beginning in year 2000 and ending in 2012, knowing in advance that 2000 was an unusually quiet year for mass shootings and that violent crime began a several year decline beginning in 2013. They ignored high quality data on mass shootings kept by law enforcement back into the 1970s; and if you can believe this, they even ignored some 20 instances of mass shooting in the early part of their study period which had the effect of making the trend over the study period steeper.
This is the future of science I guess.
This MO is not restricted to the IPCC. The US EPA uses it on a regular basis when supplying “scientific” justification for the benefit of their regulations. Just look at how they justified the mercury rule, for example. They postulated a population of pregnant women who eat an inordinate amount of fresh fish and the result was reduction of the IQs of their child to less than 0.01 IQ point. Totally meaningless from and IQ test perspective. Doesn’t matter, they have something on paper, even if it is wrong and/or meaningless.
And now they are asking us to use mercury laden fluorescent bulbs rather than harmless incandescent bulbs.
If only we could tell those fish-loving women to read to their kids more!
Rather than trying to pick the paper apart, it may be better to take it at face value. Assuming it is correct, it still shows, even after all the data manipulation that catastrophic global warming is not occurring.
We really need to fight the low road by taking the high road. Inserting a fake quote in a searchable forum is a very low road.
There was a climategate e-mail, I think sent by Mann, that talked about how it would be useful to get something published that said X. Not a major subject, but the same modus operandi.
Color me confused. Was such an email to Karl or bosses written? If not, you (and the skeptical community) should expect to get some lumps in the CAGW blogs.
I was aware of the potential confusion and deliberately used the words “possible email” and separated the email with dotted lines as a break. I also made sure the actual quotes in the mail we’re separated by quotations. Reading skills are important and required. The CAGW blogs will misinterpret to suit their agenda as they always do.
Tim, I think some of the confusion stems from the formatting as seen online. The first “hypothetical quote” from Holdren to Karl, “Subject: The Hiatus” is formatted and quoted exactly the same as the factual quotes used elsewhere. Then the email continues just below with different formatting, as if it is a different communication, “In an email on October 16, 2003 to Michael Mann and Tom Wigley I wrote:”.
Perhaps you should state “possible email” again on the heading above the hypothetical email. It’d be fine if the entire post were hypothetical or satire but in my opinion it does not belong in such a serious post.
Have you ever considered that Karl is simply incompetent? That’s the impression I’ve garnered about him from his other papers.
Perhaps increase the font size and bold it.
Perhaps put the dotted lines after the “possible” email.
I read the words “possible email” on first read through, and my instant thought was “Why would anyone make up such an email.” I also understood that quotation marks indicated further statements to be actual quotes, which again made me wonder why you felt the need to create an imaginary/possible email to preface actual quotes. It makes your literary behavior suspect for no other reason than story embellishment.
My reading skills are above average, and since you acknowledge that “CAGW blogs will misinterpret to suit their agenda”, why give them something they don’t have to misinterpret at all?
After my 2nd read, I see no reason to even insert the hypothetical email discourse.
Admonishing confused readers with having poor reading skills (your attempts at separating the fiction out is not a well-used technique) is a totally wrong defense, particularly when so many ‘suffered’ the same problem. It has been traditional scholarship for a long time that the onus is upon the WRITER to make himself understood. Essentially you are using a fantasy email as an ‘example(?)’ of the MO of CAGW scientists who manufacture science to remove factors detracting from their thesis. If you are so above half the readers in this blog, then you are doubly charged with the responsibility to be clear.
I had hoped someone else would address the hypocrisy of writing an opinion piece on CAGW “adherent’s willingness to produce science to fit the political need” while demonstrating a willingness to produce hypothetical emails to fit argumentative support needs.
You did, but I fear with far too much subtlety. 🙂
Here’s an idea. Just stick to reporting (IE, where you don’t make anything up). Or if you wish stick to editorializing (where you write your opinion about things, not make-up opinions of others about things). Bad form. No marks.
Reply to Tim Ball ==> I am a fellow WUWT author — I am not a troll nor a CAGW enthusiast. I suggest you pull this piece as it is entirely inappropriate.
Anthony tired to cover for you a bit by striking out the most egregious part, but I think he was just as confused as I was, and failed to strike out all the other made up stuff.
Faking emails pretended to be from government officials (covering yourself with the tiniest of fig leaves by using a single word “possible”) in order to accuse them of faking things is a really ill considered strategy.
Tim,
Your fumbling around to “illustrate the MO” by using fake emails is probably not a good idea.
You really should rethink this entire article, and rewrite or remove.
However, this is a great example of the fundamental need for a whistleblower from within the scam. Analysis and deduction reveals the scam MO–connive, conspire, obfuscate, admit nothing, deny everything make counter-accusations.
Until we have an actual insider who provides REAL emails that document the MO, or, better yet, an insider who wears a wire while discussing the scam with his colleagues, it is difficult to convince.
All of our realist efforts should be focused on recruiting an insider whistleblower.
Engaging with the scammers on a “scientific” level is a fool’s game. They control the rules, peer-review, the journals, the grants, everything.
With proper planning, a foundation could be set up to establish immediate rewards to whistleblowers, and legal assistance for the brave insider who speaks up to claim the multi-millions that will fall to the whistleblower who lifts the veil on the lies.
Would be happy to work on this effort.
kent@kentclizbe.com
Tim,
Your fumbling around to “illustrate the MO” by using fake emails is probably not a good idea.
You really should rethink this entire article, and rewrite or remove.
However, this is a great example of the fundamental need for a whistleblower from within the scam. Analysis and deduction reveals the scam MO–connive, conspire, obfuscate, admit nothing, deny everything make counter-accusations.
Until we have an actual insider who provides REAL emails that document the MO, or, better yet, an insider who wears a wire while discussing the scam with his colleagues, it is difficult to convince.
All of our realist efforts should be focused on recruiting an insider whistleblower.
Engaging with the scammers on a “scientific” level is a fool’s game. They control the rules, peer-review, the journals, the grants, everything.
With proper planning, a foundation could be set up to establish immediate rewards to whistleblowers, and legal assistance for the brave insider who speaks up to claim the multi-millions that will fall to the whistleblower who lifts the veil on the lies.
Would be happy to work on this effort.
Sorry, publishing an open letter on a blog site without having the courtesy to contact the person concerned is NOT called “spoke directly to “.
And just for the record, he did not “agree” with Judith Curry, he misrepresented her as follows:
I pointed out twice that this was not appropriate, he did not correct the misrepresentation.
[ Other than that, he made some valid points about the data. }
Mike, (1) there’s nothing discourteous about an open letter. An open letter is a common format for a blog post or newspaper article. But I will agree that I did not speak directly to Tom Karl.
(2) Actually, I did agree with Judith Curry. In fact, after I quoted her, I wrote: “I would tend to agree.”
(3) As to my intro to the quote from Judith (in my Open Letter to Karl) where I wrote, “Judith Curry commented in a recent post…”, I considered changing it, but Judith’s implication was quite clear.
Judith wrote: “This new paper is especially interesting in context of the Karl et al paper, that ‘disappears’ the hiatus. I suspect that the main take home message for the public (those paying attention, anyways) is that the data is really really uncertain and there is plenty of opportunity for scientists to ‘cherry pick’ methods to get desired results.”
Judith is discussing Karl et al in that paragraph and strongly implying that they cherry picked their methods “to get desired results”.
Cheers.
Thanks for the reply Bob. It would have been better to deal with this on thread you posted.
That was an untrue statement, no matter how you twist it. Your article remains uncorrected. If you considered changing it, you should have considered a bit harder. That you chose not to compounds the felony, it does not excuse it.
It really disheartens me to see this sort of thing on sceptical site, especially here. If no one gives a damn about integrity any more, there’s nothing left but a shouting match.
Glass half full or half empty? I think this thread is a good thing. I think it demonstrates that real skeptics question the motives and behaviors of those on BOTH sides of the issue, and that they insist on the same standards no matter who is doing the talking. That so many people here are unwilling to accept behavior like this quietly says a lot about who wants the truth and who just wants to “win” at any cost.
This:
Is not a fair paraphrase of:
And as Mike says:
Though I might quibble about his use of the word “if.”
Mike, would you feel better if my intro to Judith’s quote began, “Judith Curry strongly implied in a recent post…”?
Bob,
Seems to me that Mike has a valid point. Dr. Curry’s statement, as quoted is about what the public thinks. It does not directly tell me what she thinks. Although your statement might be a reasonable conclusion based on everything we know about Dr. Curry’s work, her quote does not objectively assert that Karl’s data were cherry picked, and she might well not be willing personally to assert that.
Mike says, “That was an untrue statement, no matter how you twist it. Your article remains uncorrected. If you considered changing it, you should have considered a bit harder. That you chose not to compounds the felony, it does not excuse it.”
“twist it”, “felony”, wow…and earlier, “misrepresented” and “misrepresentation”. You’re really reading way too much into my poor choice of words.
We all know you disagree with my introduction to Judith Curry’s quote in closing to my post here:
https://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2015/06/10/open-letter-to-tom-karl-of-noaancei-regarding-hiatus-busting-paper/
You appear to disagree with my use of the word “commented”. We both know I could change the meaning of that entire sentence by replacing it with “suggested” or “implied”. I obviously wasn’t concerned about the word “commented” when I wrote it. If I used “suggested” or “implied” instead of “commented”, possibly then, you wouldn’t feel that I was “misrepresenting” Judith Curry.
The saddest part of this: Your dwelling on this is a distraction from the content of the post…prior to the closing. With your continued complaints, what are people going to remember from my post?
(1)That you have used the word “misrepresentation” with reference to my post? Or (2) that the HadNMAT2 data do not support the ERSST.v4 sea surface temperature dataset that was part of Karl et al (2015), even though the HadNMAT2 data are used for the bias adjustment of the ERSST.v4 data?
I would hope most people would remember that the HadNMAT2 data do not support the ERSST.v4 data, but I suspect, with your continued remarks, that they may now focus on your word misrepresentation, though it has nothing to do with the content of the post prior to the closing.
Cheers.
Bob Tisdale
Which is the intent of his continued repetition of his charge: Distract, disrupt, distort, deny. From Rules for Radicals.
Juan Slayton, see my reply to Mike above. It was a poor choice of words. Thank you for your comment.
True Bob T, but this is a major attempt to distract from your always honorable writing. The actual quote is clear in context. I will use all caps to show the polite but clearly implied intent…
” “This new paper is especially interesting in context of the Karl et al paper, that ‘disappears’ the hiatus. I suspect that the main take home message FOR the public (THOSE PAYING ATTENTION ANYAY) is that the data is really REALLY uncertain and there is plenty of opportunity for scientists to ‘cherry pick’ methods to get desired results.”
Judith is clearly saying that the correct method the informed public should get is this paper is nothing more then cherry picking. Your quote is fine, and the distinctions are distinctions without a difference.
The MO these people use if the same MO that the anti-tobacco lobby used with the same motive, control.
If a group of people say something often enough and vociferously enough, then it will be accepted as fact.
With the anti-tobacco lobby it was “second-hand smoke” (Global Warming) which evolved into “passive smoking”.(Climate change) there was not a single study carried out that found a link between lung cancer and other peoples’ smoke, but by combining several studies into one meta study a “link” was found. The fact that there are three types of lung cancer, two of which are associated with heavy smokers (squamous cell and oat cell carcinomas) and adenocarcinoma (small cell) which is found in equal numbers in smokers and non-smokers, was conveniently ignored, because the control of tobacco was important. For “big tobacco” read “big oil”, for cigarettes, gas-guzzlers etc etc
At least the anti-tobacco group were trying to rid the world of a sometimes fatal addictive substance, there is nothing to commend the actions of the warmunists.
I’m still seeing the occasional commercial in which an ominous voice declares that second hand smoke kills thousands of people every year.
Despite the fact that not a single study has been able to link second hand smoke to cancer.
They did with their meta study after they threw out four or five of the 30 they didn’t like and then lowered the confidence limit on the remaining ones so they could claim a tiny blip on just a minority of those showed causation. Then that was magnified into those ads you still hear.
I don’t believe anything the news media or our government tells us unless I have good reason to. When I hear the phrase, “Studies Show” I automatically think it’s a lie until I find out otherwise.
I should be clear, the “They” in my 12:39 post was the EPA.
Arrg )-: my 1:28 post
The EPA lists al ‘smoke’ as ‘being the same’ or ‘having the same effect’ and chases smoke out of your life by size, not content. It has become the thing to do. The story line is the same everywhere now: PM4 is respirable and PM2.5 is the new PM10 (because PM10 is not causing much disease at all).
Cigarette smoke is mostly evaporated (by the heat) and then condensed volatile materials like tars which get into the lung and are deposited as sticky liquids and absorbed. The rest, or a fair portion of the rest, is the solid carbon particles that were formed in the very poor combustion of the smouldering fire. They are not sticky and whose that are not trapped by wet surfaces are expelled again. In short the composition of ‘first hand’ and ‘second hand’ smoke is not the same at all. This can easily be shown using two filters and x-ray analysis or nuclear analysis. Some first hand smoke comes off the tip of course.
The PM2.5 level in a room with a smoker is very high. It is astronomical inside a smoker’s lung. Because the combustion is so poor the smoker gets a high dose of carbon monoxide as well, reaching 50,000 to 150,000 ppm. This has a calming effect by turning out the lights in the brain. Nearly all smokers die from a smoking related disease.
Tobacco vendors have an M.O. that centers on lifestyle choices and freedom to choose. The smoker is thus exercising their rights to choose how they want to die. Those around them are of course denied those same choices by the smoker. So to be fair and retain a ‘pro-choice’ attitude the smoker can smoke, but outside and ‘over there’.
The trolls are active with heavy flak, which is, as wartime bomber pilots knew, a sign they were over the target.
I have to keep that in my head. It IS a good method to spot an item that wounds them deeply. In a reverse way, I think the Karl paper may be the arrow into NOAA’s heart (assuming NOAA carries forward and utilizes the data for future support of AGW warming).
or has a heart…
Send them a ‘possible’ e-mail
Sorry Mr Ball, but your analogy has nothing to do with your sin. Those you call trolls are concerned readers.
Attributing a quote to someone that they did not make, even if you preface it as a “possible quote” is wrong, and unethical.
With all due respect Mr. Ball, one shouldn’t confuse turbulence with flak. Pointing out that your flight plan will take you through rough currents is not equivalent to attempting to shoot you out of the air.
Henceforth shouldn’t we identify opposition researchers as “scientists not on the federal payroll”?
Despite having studied this in detail I have never heard mention of leather or metal buckets.
Hadley Centre “corrections” concern wooden, rubber and canvas buckets.
As you may know Congress is investigating NOAA’s temperature adjustments. I’m sure many of the emails contained in this report will be mentioned.
And wouldn’t it be funny if a “possible” e-mail that Tim Ball quoted was actually found by Congress.
From “The Unsettled Science of Climate Change: A Primer for Critical Thinkers”:
“There has been no lack of similar efforts to account for the hiatus by considering, or reconsidering, certain factors (and conveniently ignoring others), or adjusting the data in such a way as to produce the desired result. Each new publication offers a different explanation. Few attempt to replicate any of the earlier ones. As time goes by, and carefully contrived models fail to mesh with the most recent data, new factors and adjustments are retroactively stirred into the mix, so the most up-to-date findings can be represented to the world as definitive.”
This was written prior to the advent of the Karl paper, but applies equally well to that same failed effort to adjust the data in such a way as to “produce the desired result.”
More from the same source:
“To get around this problem it’s not enough to construct a model that happens to fit the data. That’s the sort of thing Ptolemy accomplished with his epicycles.”
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00YOARTPQ
I was writing a post about my reaction to this one, but I had to stop for a minute. You see, I received a possible email from Tim Ball which said:
————–
Email from Tim Ball to Brandon Shollenberger:
It’s crazy, I know!
Poor little troll.
I possibly feel your pain.
Good Heavens! Tim Ball had better get on the online editor and clean this mess up.
Rip out the fake quotes, give reliable links to quotes that are allegedly real, and ….. never mind.
Better to withdraw the whole piece with an apology.
I agree, given that he has dug in and blames the readers for the confusion.
Agreed, Tim Ball is probably the most unreliable ( and uninteresting ) author to get articles on WUWT. I have no idea why our host carries this stuff. There certainly does not seem to be a shortage of material here.
I disagree with you Mike. Tim Ball sheds light on the corruption known as the IPCC and the global warming / climate change nonsense that ‘political scientists’ peddle. If they were real “scientists” they would not peddle this garbage.
Why you said what you said makes me wonder if you are okay with all this corruption and are a closet warmunist.
Mike, Tim Ball is the only credible source of long term observations about the CAGW agenda. He was there from the beginning, way back in the eighties, and saw the agenda evolve. I do not know of another source of first hand observations who stands up for science. I find it helpful to see the big picture.
Mike, get off your high horse. Study the political motivations of the entire CAGW scam. Books have been written. Tim made a mistake in formatting what is very accurate information. You called Bob Tisdale’s accurate but poorly worded interpretation of what Judith Curry wrote a felony.
That, unlike Bobs accurate portrayal of what Judith clearly implied, was nonsense. Your general slam of Tim Ball, without articulating other examples is also without value.
Based on what I read in this thread, Mike is a typical “concern troll”. At least his MO is a typical concern troll MO 😉
Tim,
Your fumbling around to “illustrate the MO” by using fake emails is probably not a good idea.
You really should rethink this entire article, and rewrite or remove.
However, this is a great example of the fundamental need for a whistleblower from within the scam. Analysis and deduction reveals the scam MO–connive, conspire, obfuscate, admit nothing, deny everything make counter-accusations.
Until we have an actual insider who provides REAL emails that document the MO, or, better yet, an insider who wears a wire while discussing the scam with his colleagues, it is difficult to convince.
My son relentlessly repeats himself to get attention too. His excuse is that he’s 5, what’s yours?
Gosh, D.J., devastating wit.
If you want to see “repeating yourself,” follow the “scientific debate/discussion” of the realists–best demonstrated by our good host.
Well-meaning, apparently, but a complete waste of time, energy and focus. Pointing out their bad science, explaining their mendacity, proving that their math is wrong, or that they’ve fudged a number in a formula, or abused data–how many years now have realists been pointing out the scamming techniques? 15? 20?
My kids, when they were 5, learned pretty quickly to stop doing something that not produce results. They learned to focus on creative approaches to solutions.
As have I.
The only possible solution to revealing the heart of this scam is to recruit a whistleblower from the inside.
It’s the technique that prosecutors and investigators have used for a long, long time. In closely held criminal conspiracies, in which the co-conspirators have tight bonds of affinity, as in the AGW scam, there is no hope of revealing the conspiracy without an insider.
The Bernie Madoff scam is a perfect example. Without an insider providing details, the prosecution never would have been able to crack it. And yet, it took an outsider, over and over, for years, pointing the feds in the direction of the insiders with knowledge of the scam, to break the case.
I’ll keep on searching for a whistleblower who’s ready to do the right thing. Their consciences are eating away at them, even as they read this.
Do you know anyone with inside knowledge who’s ready to achieve fame, fortune and a conscience cleansing? Spread the word.
We are going to see a rain of these types of papers before Paris , in a all out effort .
The good news is it is becasue this is they feel that if they do not pull it off this time they never will and yet there is little reason to think Paris will in reality be much different to any other ‘wasteful jamboree’
—————
‘”Karl’s article is another example of the MO of the IPCC and its adherent’s willingness to produce science to fit the political need.”
You are right on , Tim.
It seems that every time there is Climate conference , a G7 meeting , a presidential major speech like the state of the union or an address of a political group,, new cherry picked science modifications to support global warming are released via hastily called press releases without little if any prior dialogue in the climate science community . These are clear political events and not about science at all.
Those who are considered as pioneers and ground breakers in science are not those who experimented and researched to promote an agenda. They simply wanted to discover how things worked and hopefully find a practical application of what they have learned. Personal motives may have been curiosity, altruism, financial gain etc. But it had to work. Edison and Bell wouldn’t have gotten get rich if the light bulb and the telephone didn’t work. But, for the most part, they sold directly to the public.
Today’s “climate science” sells to those who have an agenda to promote and the public foots the bill.
I like to think the ‘removal of the hiatus’ will ultimately be the ‘jumping the shark tank’ for the climate warmists… Because many people in the public ARE aware there has been a bit of a pause – heck even the IPCC acknowledges it. So to suddenly make it disappear will have many (not all, but many), going, ‘hang on a minute here… how can it ‘disappear?’ You said the pause was real, and now suddenly it isn’t? Just how reliable is this warming temperature data???’ And even if they don’t think that, then at the very least, there will be a seed of doubt planted as it rests uneasily that for 17-18 years there was a hiatus in the so called ‘recorded data’ and then suddenly there wasn’t…
This is the second time in a week that a regular contributor to WUWT has responded to civil, constructive criticism, from people sympathetic to his cause, by calling the critics “trolls,” and sarcastically dismissing the criticism. So far at least, Ball hasn’t gone embarrassingly over the top, as Monckton did when he flamed several commenters under his post about Karl et al, and thermodynamics.
Even though the topic of this post is more philosophical than scientific, assuming that criticism can only come from opponents, and that one’s position is perfect as presented, is the opposite of how scholarly discourse should take place. If a writer thinks that a substantive criticism is off the mark, he should either ignore it, or respond to it in kind. Flaming a thoughtful, non-confrontational commenter is wrong when CAGW writers do it. It is also wrong and counter-productive when skeptical writers do it. We shouldn’t be hypocrites.
There have been some intelligent comments here regarding the writer/reader relationship. Since these comments appear to be from like-minded people, they should be viewed as notes from a colleague after an author has given the colleague a piece to read before publication. They are a chance to consider a fresh perspective and possibly improve one’s rhetoric.
Or not. I’m new enough to this site that I could be wrong about its intentions. First impressions, even optimistic ones, have to be re-evaluated in the light of new evidence. If the habit here is not to encourage civil discussion, and discourage ad hominem attacks, even from regular contributors, then please consider this a well-intentioned, but uninformed opinion.
Having said all that: I also found the handling of the fake quote to be awkward. There are methods of formatting imagined dialogue which make clear what is being done. A couple have been mentioned. If nothing else, Ball should find it helpful, as a writer, to be made aware that the current format bounces the reader out of the essay, a distraction that could and should be avoided. As soon as I read the phrase “hypothetical email” (an unfamiliar rhetorical device) I stopped thinking about the essay’s subject and started asking questions about the essay’s construction. Fairly fundamental concept in non-fiction.
takebackthegreen, even if he didn’t use any special formatting to distinguish the fake quote from a real one, it would have been easy to clearly identify it as a hypothetical quote. It’s not hard to write a sentence saying a quote isn’t real but is something you could imagine being said. Tim Ball didn’t. He basically relied on people understanding the single phrase “possible email” to mean it wasn’t a real one, even though he then immediately described it as just an “Email.” Even if they did notice that one word, “possible,” in the ~1,700 words in the post, there’s no assurance they’d understand the quote was made up.
I really don’t think the formatting was the problem. I think the problem was just that he didn’t bother to clearly state the quote was a product of his imagination. That’s a shame because it’s easy to do.
I’ve been out today, but have now added this to the head of the post:
NOTE: In this essay, commenters have noted that Dr. Tim Ball used a rhetorical device in this sentence:
“The following is a possible email from John Holdren, Obama’s Science Czar, to bureaucrat Karl, or at least to his boss, at NOAA.”
Had I seen the word “possible”, I would not have allowed the subsequent paragraph where Dr. Ball outlined a “possible” email. While I understand what he was trying to do, this is just wrong, and I apologize to readers that this rhetorical device even exists in this essay, because it opens the possibility that somebody may interpret this as a real email. As a result, I have done a strike through on that section and I have asked Dr. Ball to comment on the issue.
Thank you Anthony. This article has shown your readers to be observant and critical if someone on our side misuses rhetoric. This article should be stashed in a prominent location as an example of rhetoric unsuitable to our purpose, and potentially harmful to our position as legitimate questioners of the science.
Integrity. Nothing wrong with that. One of the reasons this site isn’t just popular but trusted.
Per5haps Dr. Ball will be afforded the opportunity to amend the sentence to make it clearer that the email “quoted” is a hypothetical email?
OOPS!
I see you already clarified. (Integrity, again.8-)
Perhaps Dr. Ball would be permitted to add an “I concur” or clarification to what you redacted.
Some advice, Anthony, and an open warning to all of you. It would best to withdraw his post in its entirety and offer a general apology to those mentioned or have commented in this post. Dr. Ball’s use of the rhetorical device, while legitimate in form, failed in style, and the subsequent comment chain has exacerbated the situation significantly. There are several actionable comments in this post from more than one individual, about more than one individual, and given the scale of WUWT’s reach, the resultant mess could be very costly. The First Amendment offers no protection against explicit or implicit defamation, and the cosmopolitan nature of WUWT increases risk.
Clear the post, have Dr. Ball rewrite the article again if desired, based on, and including only factual information in the appropriate context, and tread carefully with both the real and implied accusations. There are limits to content in “public” conversations, the breach of which might find you at the wrong end of a very real legal dscussion.
If Dr. Ball could find a working link to the open letter reply by Gordon McBean and other EC scientists…
Message to Tim Ball ==> Please get in here and fix up this mess — or pull the entire piece.
It is entirely unclear which parts are fictitious and which parts might actually be quoting real emails — and even when one seems to recognize a quote as some email maybe from ClimateGate, etc, it is unclear who is speaking or writing.
Anthony has been forced to try and clean some of it up, but ity is still a mess of confusion.
It is an unwise strategy to try to say others are faking things up by faking things up yourself.
[snip]
Dr. Ball
Explaining the trend in Karl 2015
If the number of high ship readings is greater than the number of low buoy readings and over time that situation reverses you will always get an upwards trend. The size of the adjust made to one or the other does not effect that there will be an upward trend.
If you want a downward trend you start with the number of low buoy readings being greater than the number of high ship readings. As they reverse and the high ship readings come to outnumber the low buoy readings the downward trend appears. The size of the adjustment you make does not effect the appearance of a downward trend.
The trend is create by the changing number of high ship readings and low buoy readings.
So decreasing the greater number of high ship readings while increasing the fewer number of low buoy readings, no matter what adjustment is used between them, always produces an upward trend.
Doing it the opposite always produces a downward trend.
So the authors of Karl 2015 are either laughably incompetent or deliberate deceivers.
Eugene WR Gallun
We need to appear to play a straight game. And the only way to pull that one off convincingly is to be real sneaky and actually play a straight game.
A perfect 10. And you and I don’t agree on much.
Kudos to Tim Ball for the re-write of this column.
[Re-writes are not easy — authors like their work and don’t like scrapping something and re-doing it — I know I don’t. I admit that I scrap about 50% of what I write — it never sees the light of day.]
And Kudos2 for a real, well-worded sincere apology.
I disagree. The fake quote was clearly a spoof, a send-up. Amazing that so many got sent up!
On the other hand, it so closely mimics the real processes and priorities of the official Big Liars that it was highly plausible.