Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The increasingly frantic efforts to “medicalise” criticism of climate orthodoxy has taken a new turn, with a claim that theories cannot be disproven in of themselves. Theories can only be disputed by people who can provide a settled alternative theory.
The abstract of the study;
The ‘Alice in Wonderland’ mechanics of the rejection of (climate) science: simulating coherence by conspiracism
Science strives for coherence. For example, the findings from climate science form a highly coherent body of knowledge that is supported by many independent lines of evidence: greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from human economic activities are causing the global climate to warm and unless GHG emissions are drastically reduced in the near future, the risks from climate change will continue to grow and major adverse consequences will become unavoidable. People who oppose this scientific body of knowledge because the implications of cutting GHG emissions—such as regulation or increased taxation—threaten their worldview or livelihood cannot provide an alternative view that is coherent by the standards of conventional scientific thinking. Instead, we suggest that people who reject the fact that the Earth’s climate is changing due to greenhouse gas emissions (or any other body of well-established scientific knowledge) oppose whatever inconvenient finding they are confronting in piece-meal fashion, rather than systematically, and without considering the implications of this rejection to the rest of the relevant scientific theory and findings. Hence, claims that the globe “is cooling” can coexist with claims that the “observed warming is natural” and that “the human influence does not matter because warming is good for us.” Coherence between these mutually contradictory opinions can only be achieved at a highly abstract level, namely that “something must be wrong” with the scientific evidence in order to justify a political position against climate change mitigation. This high-level coherence accompanied by contradictory subordinate propositions is a known attribute of conspiracist ideation, and conspiracism may be implicated when people reject well-established scientific propositions.
Read more: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-016-1198-6
This has got to be one of the most ridiculous claims Lewandowsky has ever promoted. “Something is wrong” with the current theory is a perfectly valid scientific position. A demonstration that a theory is useless at prediction does not have to be accompanied by a settled alternative theory – simply demonstrating that the current theory is wrong is enough.
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Excuse me, but climate skeptics do “Provide a coherent Worldview”.
The variations of the Climate are Natural. That’s our “Coherent Worldview”. What part of that don’t they understand?
That is the Skeptical standpoint. It’s up to the “Warmists” to show that there is an Anthropogenic effect significant enough to be called “Climate Changing”….. So far they haven’t, nor have they even come close to showing that they understand the climate system in all its complexity, let alone how humans can “Change” it.
natural variations of climate? nah for that fool Lewandowsky they don’t exist. all the glaciations and interstadials are caused by the cavemen their fires that poisoned the sky….. oh and the eocene optimum was caused by the methane farts of the dinosaurs….
(insert sarc tags but do i have to say that? 🙂 )
What the heck did he say? When you don’t have anything intelligent to say dazzle them with your footwork. In this case, with your academic gibberish. BTW, their argument is nonsense. If you are charged with a crime all you have to show is that you didn’t do the crime. You don’t have to show who actually did it, you just need to show that it wasn’t you.
In legal systems derived from British law, it is up to the accuser to show that you did commit the crime. You don’t have to prove that you didn’t. Helpful if you can, of course.
Correct. It is usually taken as a logical impossibility to prove a negative proposition.
No it isn’t. It usually taken as often being a pretty difficult thing to do. That is one of the reasons we tend to put the burden of proof on the positive claim. But some negative claims are quite easy to prove. I claim that the Prime Minister does not have a brain. This is a negative claim. I can prove it by slicing his head open and revealing that there is nothing in his cranial cavity except a bit of grey fluff and a disconsolate spider. (I’d have to get the Queen’s permission, but I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.)
Guilty until proven innocent is not British law – it is French!
RoHa, you assume he keeps his brain in his head.
If I don’t know what’s right, I can’t say something is wrong. I don’t know what the square root of 2,749.53 is, so if you tell me it’s 3, I can’t say you are wrong. Thank you, L and C, for this fascinating advance in epistemology.
“Theories can only be disputed by people who can provide a settled alternative theory.”
Except that there are a whole lot of things that we just don’t know.
Note that you don’t just come up with an alternate theory, your alternate theory must be a settled theory. i.e. already written up by somebody else, published in journals and agreed with at by at least 97% of scientists.
This one statement of Lew’s is the absolute worst I’ve ever seen by anyone.
Not quite. If the theory is that humans are causing the earth to warm my inability to come up with an alternative theory of “why” does not relieve the proponent of the theory from providing evidence that the earth is warming. The burden of showing cause only arises after you have established the fact.
I read the entire article. Their main argument is that climate contrarians believe different things, so we must all be wrong, while they all believe the same thing, so they must be right. They also try to show, by quoting people out of context, that prominent contrarians state contradictory things. This becomes laughably absurd when they quote Lord Monckton saying it would take thousands of years for the Greenland Ice sheet to melt, and also saying parts of Greenland were arable in the Middle Ages, both true statements, but appearing contradictory to Lewandowsky and Cook, who apparently never looked at a map of Greenland.
The real howler is the sentence, “Their [Thagard and Findley, 2011] computer simulation of belief revision came to accept the scientific evidence because it maximized coherence among the various pieces of evidence and explanatory propositions.” In other words, if we can program a computer to believe what we believe, it must be true!
“I read the entire article. Their main argument is that climate contrarians believe different things, so we must all be wrong, while they all believe the same thing, so they must be right.”
Fifty million flies can’t be wrong.
Except that science is not about believing…
…and that they do not believe the same thing… for starters there are 102 different models presented at IPCC AR5.
This is no more and no less the logic of Kipling’s Bandar Log – the Monkey people.
“We all say it, so it must be true”.
The first Norsemen that came ashore didn’t call it “Greenland” to be pointlessly ironic. (Hipsters hadn’t been invented yet.) They really did find large tracts of green land perfect for a colony. Then the MWP ended and re-glaciation bit them in the nethers.
Ronald,
“Their main argument is that climate contrarians believe different things, so we must all be wrong”
The reason there’s so much disparity among skeptics is because there’s so much wrong with the warmists case. A single treatise can not address all of the errors at once, so its best to pick one and focus on it. Much of the work by skeptics tends to concentrate on the data, rather than the theory, but its the theory that’s fundamentally flawed and as far as the warmists are concerned, computer models based on ‘theory’ trumps data. Not that there aren’t errors among skeptical analysis, but much of that comes from accepting an error made by alarmists and adding a compensating error to counteract it, rather than addressing the original error in the first place. Consensus climate science also has many complicated errors that are dependent on more basic errors and addressing only the complicated error without addressing the basic underlying error is more easily dismissed.
The introduction about a “highly coherent body of knowledge” is a distraction and irrelevant.
The Ptolemaic model was a “highly coherent body of knowledge” but increasingly at odds with observations — sounds familiar.
“… risks from climate change will continue to grow and major adverse consequences will become unavoidable …”.
That’s just Lewandowsky’s and Cook’s shared opinion for which they have no evidence.
Even if one accepts that all the CO2 increase since (say) 1880 was due to ‘human activity” the result has been unequivocally beneficial whatever standard of the measurement of human welfare one uses.
The Ptolemaic system was a sophisticated mathematical model based on, and successfully accounting for, a large body of pretty precise observations. The model was pretty good at making predictions, too. It was only the superb data from the Danish space exploration programme that finally unseated the Ptolemaic system, in spite of Ibn Bajjah and Copernicus.
(And I can pronounce Tyge (Tycho) Brahe’s name properly.)
Tycho had a good nose for models, I wonder what happened to it?
Credit should be given …. to whom credit is due, ….. to wit:
Hipparchus of Nicaea
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipparchus
Aristarchus deserves a mention, as well, even though his heliocentrism was rejected. (And for pretty good reasons, too. The predictions made by the hypothesis seemed to be falsified.)
And perhaps a tip of the hat to all those Babylonians who collected the data and cooked up some of the maths.
You betcha. RoHa, the Babylonians were “way ahead of their time” and we of today still don’t know everything that they knew …. way back then.
Ells bells, the Babylonians may have known “who by”, “what for” and ”how” the Great Pyramid of Giza was constructed. One thing for sure, the Egyptians neither had the tools or the technology to do it.
In it’s “heyday”, the Great Pyramid of Giza could have been used as a “reflecting telescope” for studying the “motion” of earth’s galaxy.
The AGW conjecture is seriously flawed. There is evidence that the climate change we are experiencing today is caused by the sun and the oceans over which Mankind has no control. Despite all the claims, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate. There is no such evidence in the paleoclimate record. There is evidence that warmer temperatures cause more CO2 to enter the atmosphere but there is no evidence that this additional CO2 causes any more warming. If additional greenhouse gases caused additional warming then the primary culprit would have to be H2O which depends upon the warming of just the surfaces of bodies of water and not their volume but such is not part of the AGW conjecture. In other words CO2 increases in the atmosphere as huge volumes of water increase in temperature but more H2O enters the atmosphere as just the surface of bodies of water warm. We live in a water world where the majority of the Earth’s surface is some form of water.
The AGW theory is that adding CO2 to the atmosphere causes an increase in its radiant thermal insulation properties causing restrictions in heat flow which in turn cause warming at the Earth’s surface and the lower atmosphere. In itself the effect is small because we are talking about small changes in the CO2 content of the atmosphere and CO2 comprises only about .04% of dry atmosphere if it were only dry but that is not the case. Actually H2O, which averages around 2%, is the primary greenhouse gas. The AGW conjecture is that the warming causes more H2O to enter the atmosphere which further increases the radiant thermal insulation properties of the atmosphere and by so doing so amplifies the effect of CO2 on climate. At first this sounds very plausible. This is where the AGW conjecture ends but that is not all what must happen if CO2 actually causes any warming at all.
Besides being a greenhouse gas, H2O is also a primary coolant in the Earth’s atmosphere transferring heat energy from the Earth;s surface to where clouds form via the heat of vaporization. More heat energy is moved by H2O via phase change then by both convection and LWIR absorption band radiation combined. More H2O means that more heat energy gets moved which provides a negative feedback to any CO2 based warming that might occur. Then there is the issue of clouds. More H2O means more clouds. Clouds not only reflect incoming solar radiation but they radiate to space much more efficiently then the clear atmosphere they replace. Clouds provide another negative feedback. Then there is the issue of the upper atmosphere which cools rather than warms. The cooling reduces the amount of H2O up there which decreases any greenhouse gas effects that CO2 might have up there. In total, H2O provides negative feedback’s which must be the case because negative feedback systems are inherently stable as has been the Earth’s climate for at least the past 500 million years, enough for life to evolve. We are here. The wet lapse rate being smaller then the dry lapse rate is further evidence of H2O’s cooling effects.
The entire so called, “greenhouse” effect that the AGW conjecture is based upon is at best very questionable. A real greenhouse does not stay warm because of the heat trapping effects of greenhouse gases. A real greenhouse stays warm because the glass reduces cooling by convection. This is a convective greenhouse effect. So too on Earth..The surface of the Earth is 33 degrees C warmer than it would be without an atmosphere because gravity limits cooling by convection. This convective greenhouse effect is observed on all planets in the solar system with thick atmospheres and it has nothing to do with the LWIR absorption properties of greenhouse gases. the convective greenhouse effect is calculated from first principals and it accounts for all 33 degrees C. There is no room for an additional radiant greenhouse effect. Our sister planet Venus with an atmosphere that is more than 90 times more massive then Earth’s and which is more than 96% CO2 shows no evidence of an additional radiant greenhouse effect. The high temperatures on the surface of Venus can all be explained by the planet’s proximity to the sun and its very dense atmosphere. The radiant greenhouse effect of the AGW conjecture has never been observed. If CO2 did affect climate then one would expect that the increase in CO2 over the past 30 years would have caused an increase in the natural lapse rate in the troposphere but that has not happened. Considering how the natural lapse rate has changed as a function of an increase in CO2, the climate sensitivity of CO2 must equal 0.0.
This is all a matter of science
That sounds reasonable. Does everyone agree?
No
No.
No
Willhaas:
You wrote “The Climate sensitivity to CO2 must equal 0.0”
This is entirely correct. But as explained in my earlier post, AGW does exist, and is due to the removal of SO2 aerosols from the atmosphere due to Clean Air efforts.
The Climate Sensitivity to their removal is .02 deg. C. of warming for each net Megatonne of reduction in global SO2 emissions.
At current rates of reduction (about 2 Megatonnes per year), the 2 deg. C. threshold established by the 2015 Paris Climate Conference will be reached within 25 years or less.
There is indeed cause for alarm!
I was just getting ready to enter engineering school when the Apollo program ended. My dream was to work in the field of rocketry (which I do, after a fashion). But all around me were the cast off PhDs who had so gallantly taken humanity from the surface of this planet to the surface of another celestial body in 8 years; they worked in gas stations, as short-order cooks, in any kind of job they could get, because they had succeeded so well that they were no longer needed.
I think the people who have “settled the science” of climate change deserve nothing less than the same fate. They’ve done their job, and they are no longer needed. We have to devote the tens of billions of dollars that kept them in their phony baloney jobs to the bureaucrats salaries that will now be needed to destroy industrial civilization. We can’t afford to pay these superfluous eggheads any more. They have proven their point, and now need to go do something useful, like sustainable farming.
MfK September 23, 2016 at 10:16 pm —
The reason these PhD’s were thrown out on the street was Richard Nixon. When he became President he was annoyed to find that the space program started by his former opponent JFK was still going on full blast. In case you don’t remember, he lost to Kennedy in the 1960 elections. He and his supporters then grumbled that Kennedy only won because of cheating by a corrupt democratic machine in Chicago. Thanks to the assassination he eventually got a second chance and won. Kennedy had planned 20 moon landings. Apollo 11 had just landed after Nixon became president and work on Apollo 17 had started. It became the last one to be completed because Nixon then ordered the remaining three moon landings to be cancelled. The prime contractor for moon landings at the time was Grumman Aerospace in Bethpage, Long Island. They were told to fire all people whom Grumman no longer needed to build the lunar lander modules that were cancelled. As a result, Grumman was forced to lay off ten thousand people in January 1970. I was among them but fortunately I had taken ed. courses thanks to my wife’s “just in case” thoughts and could step into the science teaching field immediately. Those PhD’s you met were not so lucky.
Fasc1sts strive for coherence.
Libertarians say “vive le difference!”
The denial of difference is the root of oppression.
The denial of difference leads to borderless bathrooms.
This is just another attempt to stifle any public discussion.
Hogg wash and snake oil propagand according to the GIGA principle.
All former Sovjet Apparatchiks and Party Officials would have been proud of them.
“Theories can only be disputed by people who can provide a settled alternative theory.”
No, theories can ONLY be proven false when they make a prediction that is falsified.
Since there are very few (any?) predictions made by the current set of AGW modellers that have come true it is hard to see why they are calling people denialists for pointing that out.
Environmentalists appear to be anti-popperists.
Cargo cultists.
They keep having to make new excuses every time reality slaps them in the face.
Complete and utter climate bollocks.
Why does that graph (top graph) stop at 20012 or 13 and not updated to 2016??
…2012 or 2013 and not updated to 2016?
They claim to be “coherent”, and I suppose that when 100% of their predictions are wrong, that is at least coherent. I just don’t think that is anything for them to be proud of…
I wasn’t aware we had to come up with a “Coherent Alternate Worldview”. I thought reality was good enough ^_^
I agree with this bit!
“is a hoax perpetrated by corrupt scientists who wish to spend more taxpayer money on climate research”
He’s right, you know. The climate change hypothesis cannot be disproved. At least, not safely.
Try doing it as an academic and see what happens to you. ..
How about a completely different viewpoint?
The argument seems to be about climate change, which is seen by some as natural and by others as human-induced via greenhouse-gas increase. I will now digress and make it suitably controversial by calling in an example from elsewhere: the debate about the existence of God. Here, the debate appears to be about God as portrayed by the world’s religions and those that deny that God exists by refuting arguments based on that portrayal; what is missing is debate on what if God exists but has attributes different to those He/She/It is credited with having. Applying this method of reasoning to climate change, what if there’s something other than CO2 release that is human induced and may be changing the climate?
I would like to propose a candidate, namely deforestation. I live in Johannesburg, where the municipality has been on a drive to eradicate “invasive” species from the municipal boundaries, and they have achieved significant success in this. Johannesburg is also honeycombed sub-surface with numerous old mine workings. What has this to do with my theory?
Firstly the facts, namely that the “invasive” species are more efficient water pumps, and therefore seen as more “thirsty”. Johannesburg has historically been seen as cooler and wetter than the surrounding Highveld area, something I attribute to the evapotranspiration effect of the trees that have now been removed; It should also be mentioned that at one time this was the largest man-made forest in the world, consisting largely of “invasive species” . In the short term, logically then the result will be a warming of the area.
Since the effect of removing the trees is not under consideration, this will be attributed to global warming due to CO2 increase. Further, due to the fact that the water supply was not reduced, the water that these trees would have released into the atmosphere as vapour has now percolated to the water table, and Johannesburg now has a serious acid mine drainage problem. It is even possible to foresee additional climactic effects arising from this: The water vapour that was previously released into the atmosphere by these plants is no longer falling elsewhere as precipitation, making the climate elsewhere drier. More CO2 effects, anyone?
What is interesting, but not conclusive, is that the climate change that accompanied, and some say caused, the end of the Bronze and Iron Ages, was accompanied by extensive deforestation due to the need for fuel to smelt ores….
I think that the history of science may well suggest that Mr Worrall is correct in saying ;
” A demonstration that a theory is useless at prediction does not have to be accompanied by a settled alternative theory – simply demonstrating that the current theory is wrong is enough.
At the end of the 19th Cent it was clear for several years that the then current theories in physics were incorrect, inadequate or incomplete by the failure to explain the Michelson -Morley null result, the black body curve , the photoelectric effect . It took a while until Planck, Lorentz and Einstein provided alternative theories to help resolve the problems . In fact it was the realisation that there was something wrong that motivated or inspired their revolutionary ideas – rather than just ignoring the problems as Cook and Lewandowsky would have advised them to do.
The article by Lewandowsky got more similarities with a preach in a church than it got with science. What he is demonstrating is inductivism. On the other hand, this is a scientific method:
1 A hypothesis is proposed. This is not justified and is tentative.
2 Testable predictions are deduced from the hypothesis and previously accepted statements.
3 We observe whether the predictions are true.
4 If the predictions are false, we conclude the theory is false.
5 If the predictions are true, that doesn’t show the theory is true, or even probably true. All we can say is that the theory has so far passed the tests of it.
This is the book by Karl Popper where the method was put forward: The logic of scientific discovery. Enjoy some soothing reading, first 26 pages contains the essence. Here are some quotes:
“… it is always possible to find some way of evading falsification, for example by introducing ad hoc an auxiliary hypothesis, or by changing ad hoc a definition. It is even possible without logical inconsistency to adopt the position of simply refusing to acknowledge any falsifying experience whatsoever. Admittedly, scientists do not usually proceed in this way, but logically such procedure is possible»
“the empirical method shall be characterized as a method that excludes precisely those ways of evading falsification which … are logically possible. According to my proposal, what characterizes the empirical method is its manner of exposing to falsification, in every conceivable way, the system to be tested. Its aim is not to save the lives of untenable systems but … exposing them all to the fiercest struggle for survival.»
“a subjective experience, or a feeling of conviction, can never justify a scientific statement, and that within science it can play no part except that of an object of an empirical (a psychological) inquiry. No matter how intense a feeling of conviction it may be, it can never justify a statement. Thus I may be utterly convinced of the truth of a statement; certain of the evidence of my perceptions; overwhelmed by the intensity of my experience: every doubt may seem to me absurd. But does this afford the slightest reason for science to accept my statement? Can any statement be justified by the fact that Karl Popper is utterly convinced of its truth? The answer is, ‘No’; and any other answer would be incompatible with the idea of scientific objectivity.”
“All this glaringly contradicts the programme of expressing, in terms of a ‘probability of hypotheses’, the degree of reliability which we have to ascribe to a hypothesis in view of supporting or undermining evidence.”
– Karl Popper
Lewandowsky is endorsing inductivism – pseudoscience based on inductive methods – his methods are not coherent with a proper scientific method.
But Ironically, Popper is the inspiration for George Soros, one if not THE instigator of it all.
It is a little tricky with wording, i guess. A hypothesis attempts to answer questions by putting fourth an explanation not yet tested much. A theory being something that has already been extensively tested by a wider community and accepted. Even then, theroies can be challenged, but yes, generally another hypothesis needs to be put fourth and we see if it makes it into theory.
However, who says it is a question or problem that needs a theory?
With AGW, it is a generally accepted theory. The devil in the detail being feedback, negative and positive and that’s what is still a hypothesis. It would be safe to say that CAGW has been able to survive as a theory based on observations.
Has not been able to survive, it should say…
As you say, it is a matter of semantics. In the vernacular, what scientists call an hypothesis is called a theory. What scientists call a theory is god given fact. Many of the pseudo-scientists deliberately hop from the scientific to the vernacular to deliberately confuse the two entirely different meanings and the so-called MSM are active accessories.
This confusion of language has been commented on by far greater minds than mine, to wit Churchill’s “two people separated by a common language”.
In my article The Academic Ape: Instinctive aggression and boundary enforcing behaviour in academia I explain how academics like Lewandowsky instinctively attack those outside academia who dare to enter what they (falsely) perceive as subjects that are “academic territory”. And they do so with a hatred and obsession that only instinct can try and which they do not comprehend.
In essence their worldview is that unless you accept the dogma of the “group” (aka academics) then you are a “denier” and must be attacked. So (yawn) yet again we get another pathetic Lewandowsky attack – which is all noise and no action.
And it’s just the same in the apes – here it involves running around howling and shouting, grabbing young trees thrashing them about and generally making a lot of noise throwing anything they can get their hands on and generally trying to intimidate “non group” members into either joining them or leaving their “territory”.
So, you’re basically saying that Lewandowsky is, in monkey-like fashion, flinging his academic poop at us.
“NASA Faked the Moon Landing—Therefore, (Climate) Science Is a Hoax:
An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science”
“The ‘Alice in Wonderland’ mechanics of the rejection of (climate) science:
simulating coherence by conspiracism”
“The role of conspiracist ideation and worldviews in predicting rejection of science. ”
“Recurrent fury: Conspiratorial discourse in the blogosphere triggered by research on the role of conspiracist ideation in climate denial.”
“Rational irrationality: Modeling climate change belief polarization using Bayesian networks.”
“Conspiratory fascination vs. public interest: The case of ‘climategate’”
Anyone notice a similarity?
A regurgitation of the same alarmist garbage from the masters of attempting to pass off naked partisan attack, done for the sole purpose of media exposure to smear those who do not blindly adhere to their their beliefs … along with pretty much a complete absence of science.
This is not remotely a scientific paper. It is a length soapbox screed – employing the best of the ‘if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle ’em with a pile of bullshit’ mentality.
There is ZERO science or rational “study” here – just a recitation of all the reasons they claim their position is right, with requisite one sided references that support their rant. And obviously NO note of the many credible rebuttals to a good share of their ‘references.’
Missing entirely is ANY attempt at reviewing competing science. Missing is any credible, intelligent discussion of the two sides. Simply an appeal to authority and ridicule of anyone who dares to be open minded and or question the cabal’s approved message.
And their claimed: “Contradictory and incoherent arguments advanced by the same individuals” examples are nothing of the sort. They are logical fallacies. Lewandowsky and Cook et al have a long history of this. Keeping in mind they write (and rewrite, and rewrite) these same exact claims, simply repacking them in numerous new “papers.”
They know full well the statements they claim to be “contradictory and incoherent” are neither. Context is highly important – again, which they conveniently ignore in their rush to demonize. But they know from long experience that does not matter to an ignorant, clueless, and highly biased media – who couldn’t have an intelligent discussion on a single one of these statements – but who fall all over themselves to promote these untruthful smears.
Exactly the intent of Lewandowsky and Cook … time after time, after time.
The best example of EXACTLY who and what Lewandowsky and Cook truly are is this statement – in which they attempt to justify using their use of derogatory, denigrating and outright FALSE claim that skeptics deny, are deniers of, anthropogenic global warming.
This is 100% pure, unadulterated, steaming pile of absolute bovine excrement. Skeptics do not DENY the science. They question the conclusions, especially when weighed against the growing body of legitimate, peer reviewed science that credibly refutes the warmist cabals repeated claims.
Skeptics review work that rebuts these claims with science – open, cooperative, data and method sharing, real science. Something Lewandowsky, Cook and a very large share of the warmist cabal refuses to do.
Skeptics are most certainly NOT “deniers.”
Skeptics acknowledge the Earth HAS warmed – appx. 0.9 degree C over the last century or so. Skeptics acknowledge there IS a warming effect from increases in greenhouse gases. It would be abjectly stupid to deny that this occurs, as the ‘greenhouse’ effect is what makes and keeps our plant habitable. There are MANY more similar examples – that clearly show skeptics do not deny basic climate science.
Lewandowsky, the warmist cabal, and their legion of followers want us to suspend the scientific method – becasue, well – they are simply right dammit. Anyone that disagrees is a “denier” – no matter how well supported their position, nor what the credible peer reviewed science shows. No one else could possibly be right.
And of course we all know main stream scientific “consensus” is never, ever wrong.
The science is not settled. Not remotely. And if IF a group thinks it is – the solution is not witch hunts and vitriolic partisan smears – to denigrate and demean opposing view points. The solution is MORE science – not ridiculing others work.
If the warmist cabal is correct the quickest way to ascertain that is to go back to the basics – the scientific method. If their science is robust then SUPPORT and embrace challenge. Provide all of the data and methods so other can replicate and validate your conclusions.
The warmist cabal believe discourse and debate is good – as long as it is only amongst themselves – amongst fellow travelers. The warmist cabal claims they support research – as long as its research they approve of and that follows their agenda and beliefs.
The warmist cabal claims a ‘lack of mechanisms to self-correct the scientific incoherencies manifest in denialist discourse.’ Which is simply and completely untrue. There ARE plenty of mechanisms to address scientific differences of opinion – once again, it is called the “scientific method” … where ALL scientists work to find out the truth, where to be a scientist you must choose between science and activism.advocacy … and where all true scientists fully cooperate with those who seek to challenge their work and conclusions – not denigrate and demean those skeptical – NOT in denial of – the mainstream ‘consensus’ position.
If you disagree the true solution is to HELP and support those who want to challenge and replicate your work. If your results and conclusions are valid, challenge will confirm that. And real challenge – from those who disagree with you – is the best solution. Getting your pals and buddies – who believe exactly as you do – to review your work is as laughable and silly as it sounds.
Being skeptical is not any credible example of conspiracist ideation. Period.
The data – Lewandowsky’s own data – definitively showed the opposite. The entire inflammatory headline claim in the widely ridiculed “NASA Faked the Moon Landing—Therefore, (Climate) Science Is a Hoax:
An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science” was shown to be based on just a handful – less than 10 – out of 1,000+ responses.
And a review of the response data clearly showed a number of these responses were fraudulent and/or attempts to ‘game’ or ‘skew’ the results.
Remove the fraudulent and not credible responses and the tiny thread os support for Lewandowsy’s headline claim disappears into the wind.
Even one of the core members of Cook’s “Skeptical Science’ blog – which is anything but skeptical… was incredulous about Lewandowsky’s flawed work and conclusions:
… bolding by original author.
Curtis continued:
And a final quote of one of many of Tom’s comments:
Tom Curtis took a bold stand. He commented honestly and fairly, based on the methodology, the quality, and the conclusions. Comments that caused him considerable headache from Cook and the Skeptical Science faithful.
They were completely truthful, as supported by dozens of similar detailed reviews showing the same conclusions.
The only real conspiracy ideation here is with Lewandowsky, Cook et al. They did EXACTLY what they accuse “deniers” of – they literally manufactured a conspiracy out of a handful of responses – that were easily demonstrated to be fraudulent and gamed.
Anyone with even the simplest of basic skills could see the lack of truth in their data, methods, quality and conclusions. Anyone with a shred of credibility could see their clear agenda.
Denigrate, demean and smear those pesky ‘ol “deniers” … using any way you can … no matter how low, nor how totally unsupported by their own data.
THAT is what Lewandowsky, Cook and their warmist cabal truly represent. They have gotten smarter as well along the way. Now they do not make any pretense of scientific research. No chance for your data and methods to be reviewed, replicated and shown to be ‘knowingly false’ by even your friends … when you do no scientific study at all.
Great post, A. Scott.
@ur momisugly A. Scott. A super post.
An excellent early commentary from Steve McIntyre about the inflammatory and denigratingly titled “NASA faked the moon landing—Therefore (Climate) Science is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science”
https://climateaudit.org/2012/09/08/lewandowsky-scam/