Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Does a scientist crying about apocalyptic predictions make their science more convincing?
According to The Guardian;
Should scientists show emotion while discussing their science? I ask because a professor of ocean geology wept as she discussed with me the impact carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are having on the sea.
She fears we are acidifying and heating the ocean so fast that her young daughters may no longer enjoy coral reefs and shellfish by the end of the century.
And as we pondered the future, her passion for the oceans triggered tears.
I have no doubt that the tears are genuine. But tears and displays of intense emotion are not the hallmark of an objective observer.
Science is fragile – it is incredibly easy to inadvertently contaminate your results with preconceptions. This fragility is why laborious techniques such as the double blind experimental protocol were developed. Nobody would bother with all the extra work needed to set up a double blind experiment – if bitter experience hadn’t taught the scientists who practice double blind, how easy it is to make a mistake.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool. – Dr. Richard Feynman From “Cargo Cult Science“, adapted from a 1974 Caltech commencement address; also published in Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!
If a scientist feels so emotional about their work that they burst into tears, how can we possibly trust that same scientist can successfully set that strong emotion and potential bias aside, when they evaluate whether the evidence supports their theories?
Climategate contains numerous examples of questionable scientific practices, such as the infamous hide the decline email, and the Oroko Swamp email – but it doesn’t in my opinion contain evidence of a systematic conspiracy to deceive the world. Instead, my impression is that the people who wrote the climategate emails very much believe in what they are doing. But they believe so strongly in their mission to save the world, in my opinion they seem to have no problem with bending the rules, to deny skeptics an opportunity to impede their mission. And that willingness to reframe bad news, that apparent lack of commitment to objectivity and scientific best practice, is what in my opinion opens the way for unscientific bias.
This isn’t the first time climate scientists have tried to win us over by showing us their “feelings”. It didn’t work last time, and I don’t think it will work this time.
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In the Church of Manmade Warming, emotion is encouraged; indeed for them it’s a badge of honor. The stronger the Belief, the stronger the emotion. Climate talks are terrific stages for dramatic displays of emotion. In 2007 there was the spectacle of Yvo de Boer, the man in charge of the Bali climate conference being led away in tears. Then of course we have the Weepster himself, Bill McKibben at the COP15 Climate Clown-fest in Copenhagen bragging about how he had wept the night before, beginning his tale of extreme sadness with “This afternoon I sobbed for an hour, and I’m still choking a little.” It’s better of course if it’s a man crying, due to the social stigma.
“If a scientist feels so emotional about their work that they burst into tears, how can we possibly trust that same scientist can successfully set that strong emotion and potential bias aside, when they evaluate whether the evidence supports their theories?”
Exactly. See my post on this topic over at Judith’s place, which covers the deliberate long-term emotive campaigns of the Consensus, and the outpourings of scientists who, like large swathes of society have now themselves been seriously compromised by the unleashed emotions.
http://judithcurry.com/2015/04/24/contradiction-on-emotional-bias-in-the-climate-domain/
It is a madness. For years they’ve kept doing the same thing, which is scare us. They keep rearing up more skeptics.
This will end well.
============
Well while the warmists weep Adelaide’s kiddies are rushing around trying to cobble together snowmen or the occasional snowman and here’s some pics in the local online news-
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/photos-fnlmw1po-1227437838346/?page=1
If you’re chuckling a bit at the paucity of the snowmen you need to bear in mind Adelaide enjoys a Mediterranean climate but we do have our Mount Lofty –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Lofty
and as it says-
Due to Adelaide’s mild winters, temperatures cold enough to produce snow in the Adelaide metropolitan area never occur, and the nearest snowfields to Adelaide are in eastern Victoria, over 700 km away. However, light snowfalls (rarely lasting for more than a day) are not uncommon on the summit (although it is possible for Mount Lofty to go two or three years without any snowfall.) This is a huge novelty for the approximately 1 million residents of the Adelaide Plains, (particularly for the children), and a photograph of the event has made the front page of the local newspaper multiple times in the past.[7] Mount Lofty is the coldest location in the Adelaide area; during winter months the temperature may not exceed 3-4 °C on some days. The summit is the most common location for snow in South Australia; rare snowfalls sometimes occur in other parts of the Mount Lofty Ranges, and in Northern South Australia.
Yes Mt Lofty was a big mountain once but in this ancient land it long ago wore away to be a big hill by mountain folk standards. Adelaide like most of southern Australia is gripped by a cold spell at present, tipped to last a week or so as the right low pressure system up from the Antarctic gives us the shivers and those rare snow mists and in Adelaide is tipped to give us some of our coldest winter days in up to 15 years. Now bear in mind in that period we had a decade long general drought so naturally you forget what average winters are like and of course to get that long term average back on track, naturally everyone’s running around thinking the next ice age is upon us. It’s called weather folks but the kids are having fun even if the warmist adults are bawling their eyes out.
oops- snowball or snowmen
Interestingly enough with that Wiki quote-
“Due to Adelaide’s mild winters, temperatures cold enough to produce snow in the Adelaide metropolitan area never occur,”
well that’s not quite true from those pictures in some suburbs in Adelaide but it is generally true so you can see this cold spell is a goodun. Probably should read ‘hardly ever’
http://www.climate-skeptic.com/2008/08/100-months-to-t.html
How about a major rally to demand compensation from the climate science supporting organisations for unwarranted distress from this prediction. A bit of publicity now could see a fair bit of support if we could get one of the ambulance chaser legal companies to take on a case.
After all if the claims can reduce a scientist to tears think what it would do to an innocent gullible child.
I wonder if that professor can demand his job back now it is proven he is right?
….her young daughters may no longer enjoy coral reefs and shellfish by the end of the century……
Waaahhhhhhh! These people drive me crazy worrying about things that won’t happen. Here’s another: “In the future children just aren’t going to know what snow is.” Waaahhhhhhh!
It’s more evidence of the collapse of the AGW paradigm. Maybe that is where the real tears are coming from.
My mother used to tell me that if I didn’t stop whining she would give me “something to whine about.” That’s exactly how I feel about these babies. The need a good swat on the fanny.
I believe an uncorrupted psychiatrist (few anywhere near climate science, it seems) would diagnose the tears being having been caused by the ‘pause’. It has to have been a terrible strain on inexorable warming proponents as the years piled on years adding to the hiatus after half a career or more sailing along with CO2 theory of climate change.
Those diagnosed with climate depression all say its because people won’t listen to the the predictions of imminent disaster. It is the most classic case of D’Nile, a well known symptom of depression, used before more recent applications of the term. ‘D’ is a classic patient’s way of avoiding facing reality and it creates depression – the head knows somewhere in there.
Jonova has a blog post from a year ago that is worth a read: http://joannenova.com.au/2014/08/alarmists-and-mental-illness-climate-depression-climate-change-delusion/
She fears we are acidifying and heating the ocean so fast that her young daughters may no longer enjoy coral reefs and shellfish by the end of the century.
Wept after approaching said daughters answered ‘no worry mom, forget corals and shellfish. hand the bucks and we bring ChickenMcNuggets no ends.’
somethings foul in Denmark.
Hans
Eric Worrall –
Yes, you’re right.
No, reasoning to automats does’nt make it.
– there’s automazations specialists.
Neuropathologists e.g.
they get paid for.
Best Regards – Hans
I placed a comment on the Gaurdian piece which stated that she may have been crying tears of frustration because despite thr best efforts of her and her fellow proponents of AGW there is a large and well qualified body of scientific opinion that does not buy in to it.
imagine my surprise then to find that my comment was removed by the moderators!! So much for Comment is Free and a fair and impartial discussion.
It appears that climate scientists are mostly clinically depressed or suffering pre-traumatic stress syndrome so that explains all their tears and fears, not to mention their extreme difficulty concentrating on the data at hand-
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/the_most_dangerous_job_on_earth/
More pre-traumatic stress I’m afraid warmies-
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/technology/earth-heading-for-mini-ice-age-within-15-years/story-fnjww4h6-1227439329592
Ohhhh Gaia why hast thou forsaken us?
Going back to your older post, it’s a bit worrying that quite a few of these supposedly-eminent professional scientists feel the need to write on pre-ruled notepaper.
Those of us who learned to write in straight lines mostly gave that up in prep school.
Can somebody who actually knows the chemistry enlighten me about this impending loss of the coral reefs (not to mention all the carbonate-shelled shellfish)? I see alarmists talking (and getting emotional) about ocean acidification by CO2 dissolving in the water and then becoming carbonic acid. Then I seem to recall reading that most of the CO2 in natural waters is in the form of the bicarbonate ion, which has a mildly alkaline reaction. And I see people on the anti-alarmist side saying that the ocean can not POSSIBLY become acidic. It should be a simple and definitive answer, can it or can’t it? Somebody who actually knows the chemistry enlighten me please with some actual facts – how does CO2 behave in salt water?. I’m too lazy to get out the chemistry textbooks from my student days, even assuming that I could find them, and maybe they wouldn’t address the fairly complex chemistry of seawater anyway. Really, this should not be a matter of opinion, everyone agrees that the CO2 content of the atmosphere is increasing, what is this doing to seawater?.
And while we are on chemistry, I seem to recall in the dim-and-distant days when I was learning basic physical chemistry, that the solubility of gases in water will decrease with increasing temperature. Wouldn’t warming (of the water, that is, which is where the missing heat is going, n’est-ce-pas?) tend to offset (or maybe completely offset?) the uptake of CO2 by ocean water from enriched atmosphere? Words like partition coefficient are starting to stir in the recesses of my long under-utilised brain.