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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Lewandowsky and Cook are in urgent need of psychiatric treatment.
“People who oppose this scientific body of knowledge because the implications of cutting GHG emissions…”
And what of those who oppose it because it keeps failing, because nature keeps disproving it or because the proponents from the Church of AGW keep indulging in PR tactics instead of engaging in debate? (a sure sign of no valid argument)
Many years ago (I think it was) Melbourne Uni did a survey of psych students and found something like 95% of them took up psych because of personal problems and issues. Given the observed failure rates of psych treatments where drugs are the preferred method of dealing with mental issues, that would imply most psych graduates, psychiatrists and psychologists are dealing with unhandled mental problems and should never be allowed anywhere close to positions of authority.
Certainly it seems clear most psych graduates should have to do an extra course to qualify them in Science, given the observed standards we see with people like Lewandowsky are so far from rigorous scientific method.
“major adverse consequences will become unavoidable”.
I’d like to know how he knows this.
if you take fresh wallnuts
put them in a gunny sack and run over it with the car a few times to crush the husks
throw the sack in the creek and watch the paralyzed fish float to the top, stunned by the juice.
cook and lew know that when they serve someone like you a steaming platter of stupid, it will paralyze you
you will be unable to control yourself. you will be stunned.
the purpose of the balderdash is that, entirely that and nothing but that.
so now it’s your choice.
Lewandowsky and Cook are saying that one cannot entertain doubt regarding the uncertainties in climate science, or pursue alternate lines of thinking or ideas.
They are in the wrong line of work, they should give up their current jobs and pursue a religious career.
LOL – they already are… 😀
Religion requires faith in a higher power, something bigger than, and outside of self. Lewww and Cook believe that they, and other humans just like them, can “save” the planet, control the climate, change the future. If AGW is a religion, then humanity is both demon and deity in it.
I view them as nothing greater than mediocre propagandists who constantly undermine their own campaigns because they are completely oblivious to the way normal, average, everyday people think and feel and behave. For two people who supposedly study and seek to understand human behavior, every paper they write makes it more and more clear that history might one day record them as the worst psychologists (certainly the most embarrassing) of all time.
they understand psychology perfectly well and seek to control your behavior.
they want to neutralize you by presenting stupid so deep you drown in it.
and there you are- jumped right in their pond.
their game is trollery. they are brilliant at it – they are at least as good as the characters who were once found on #ED on efnet. you might not know of them – but you have surely heard of rickrolling, i can has cheezeburger, caturday, over 9000! – right? once they put blinky gifs on an epileptic support site. that’s not the sort of thing done by clueless happenstance.
well cook and lew did the 97% meme that broke the internets…lol
you think that was random and pointless?
wow. they fooled you bigtime.
they conceive a meme that anybody who says that they deliberately created a meme is a conspiracy theorist (as if that’s a bad thing when it’s perfectly accurate…lol) and tied your shoelaces together.
funny cuz that’s why a lie can travel round the world while truth is still gettin its laces untied.
yeah- it’s a metaphor and all metaphors are incomplete and inaccurate – but the point is cook and lew are the 2 who control your thoughts. you react to them. you are not out-thinking them. so when you assert that they are not very smart you are really confirming they have totally outsmarted you.
If I am ever charged with murder, I hope Lewandowsky isn’t the judge presiding over my trial. Even if I could provide numerous witnesses and an airtight alibi that I was nowhere near the scene at the time of the murder, he would tell the jury that my evidence was not enough. He would say that I must also provide a coherent alternate explanation as to how the murder took place. If I cannot provide that explanation, along with a better murder suspect than myself, then the original error-ridden prosecution theory stands, and I must be found guilty. Isn’t that what he’s saying? Even if you can find something wrong with the current theory about climate change, that isn’t enough. You must also provide a coherent alternate explanation for the behavior of the climate. If not, the original theory, despite its proven errors, remains intact. That is not, and has never been, how science works.
The climate “EXPERTS” declared his hypothesis, paper, and theory to be illogical, irrational, and impossible long before he wrote it. He needs to pay attention to them.
“…we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled nonlinear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
– IPCC AR4 WG1
The argument that a theory can only be rejected by a better more complete theory…. where have I heard that before?
Thats right, religious debate. God created the universe and science can not explain origin of life and the universe therefor religion wins.
It is the hallwark of a religious mindset that is on display hera.
“Why Politicized Science is Dangerous” by Dr. Michael Crichton.
https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0ahUKEwiI1vvJ06rPAhVBm5QKHQ1NCKgQFggdMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fmsu.edu%2Fcourse%2Flbs%2F332%2Fbellon%2FR0124b.pdf&usg=AFQjCNFCFxJvb5GrF6NBwz4gY2eiIHVqpw&cad=rja
To get a coherent alternate worldview you have to think like leftists do-
http://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/master-of-horror-fiction-stephen-king-says-trump-presidency-scares-me-to-death/ar-BBwB6Og?li=AA4RE4&ocid=spartandhp
“A Trump presidency scares me more than anything else”
“I’m terrified that he’ll become president.”
“The key chord to all of this is fear” (speaking of Trump supporters)
“As long as people are fearful it’s hard to have a rational discussion”
You said it buster.
Sadly, psychologists aren’t held to the same professional and ethical standards that practicing psychiatrists are:
http://www.businessinsider.com/does-trump-have-a-psychiatric-diagnosis-mental-illness-2016-8
Psychiatrists are not allowed to offer their opinion on Trump or Clinton — here’s why
(Maria Oquendo- president of the American Psychiatric Association)-
“The unique atmosphere of this year’s election cycle may lead some to want to psychoanalyze the candidates, but to do so would not only be unethical, it would be irresponsible,” her statement reads.
Here’s the heart of Oquendo’s argument against the practice:
“We live in an age where information on a given individual is easier to access and more abundant than ever before, particularly if that person happens to be a public figure. With that in mind, I can understand the desire to get inside the mind of a Presidential candidate. I can also understand how a patient might feel if they saw their doctor offering an uninformed medical opinion on someone they have never examined. A patient who sees that might lose confidence in their doctor, and would likely feel stigmatized by language painting a candidate with a mental disorder (real or perceived) as ‘unfit’ or ‘unworthy’ to assume the Presidency.”
It’s also “intellectually dishonest for a mental health professional — or any physician — to give a diagnosis without examining the patient,” as the psychiatrist Richard A. Friedman argued in The New York Times. And such armchair diagnoses could be used as “a political weapon to denigrate an opponent,” he added.”
***********
NONE of these obviously rational, logical responses from the public to seeing professionals diagnose people they have never met or examined seem to bother Lew and Cook in the least. Or is it that they never even occurred to them at all????
But we lumpenproletariat are fair game silly.
The thing that bothers me the most is that Synthese (the journal this article appears in) has a reputation as a serious intellectual forum. Or perhaps I should say “had” – maybe this is a case of Pod People taking over another citadel.
On many occasions I wrote saying that to stop environmental movement on pollution due to chemical inputs in agriculture UN was compelled to counteract this initiated global warming and carbon credit at Rio summit even though they have no quantitative knowledge on the subject.
Few minutes back I saw a news item from Indian daily newspaper that one of the proponent of organic farming was awarded Doctorate by agricultural University was withdrawn due to pressure from corporates of chemical inputs in agriculture.
During Paris meet in Nov-Dec 2015 at COP21 multinational chemical inputs companies thwarted inclusion of certain issues raised by Pope Francis relating pollution.
With all these pollution has taken back seat and harming human health and thus creating new pollution sources to health care system.
Unfortunately modern politicians are more interested to get a share in the funds and least bothered on human healthcare system. This is the modern man!!!
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Lewandowsky and Cook know less than nothing about variables and degrees of freedom. If they did they would understand that both known and unknown variables in a highly complex system have confounding variables around every bend.
It takes very little to blast through a climate proposal that has only one dial. Both CO2 and solar theories are such proposals. Neither theory meets the substantial vetting needing in a multi-variable, teleconnected system such as climate.
In additions, basic natural climate science has yet to be completed. Due to the fact that grant dollars have been awarded to anthropogenic studies to a substantial degree, all the unknown and known natural variables related to climate get short-sheeted in terms of investigations.
Final word: Social investigation is not science. Sorry Lewi and Cook. Go to the back of the class.
Actually I would just love one of these guys, Maybe Lord Monckton who has form, sue Lewandowski and Cook for Libel since they have openly released their names in a paper ostensibly accusing them of having a conspiracy ideation disorder. In fact I would love one of them to make a complaint because ethical standards in Psychology demand that subjects to a study must remain anonymous. Surely they can be deregistered for that or at least warrants a complaint to the VC of their universities gross violation of professional ethics.
Ian, Chris, Anthony – go for it.
As taxpayers we are forced to pay for Cook & Lewandowski’s illogical analysis
As a denier in their view I agree I cannot provide an alternative theory to explain the climate changes as I believe data proves there has been no significant change in climate from its complex pattern while agreeing it fails to match the simplistic ones the use.
The data would indicate that what we actually have given hindsight is proof of the inadequacy of training in the climate science field in two respects.
Firstly there is the failure of climate scientists in determining what is the normal progression of climate to indicate what then can be classified as climate change. The method they use is facile and oversimplified as well as utterly unsuited to any pattern with a cyclic component. This at different times makes for an assumption of a return of the ice age which they are now strenuously denying they use to claim and the still currently fashionable global warming even if it is cynically conveniently renamed climate change for public consumption.
Secondly there is the assumption that those most trained in a purely theoretical world as scientist are will be competent to do what is fundamentally an engineering function of real world data collection without any semblance of practical training or skills. Here the results show the true pathetic lack of skill even fails to meet ones lowest expectations.
so what do people think about this then?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2016/sep/26/the-madhouse-effect-of-climate-denial
The delusional Michael Mann mentioned in the first sentence, therefore not worth reading.
As the paper suggests, science is logically coherent. I simply ask, is this paper logically coherent?
The very first sentence establishes a false fact. It claims that it is factually confirmed that anthropogenic GHG emissions are dangerous. Yet it is well know that the estimated equilibrium climate sensitivity remains unknown even after it’s first estimation around six decades ago. Clearly we can’t be certain that anthropogenic climate change is dangerous.
When your underpinning assumption is incorrect, what value is the paper? But why stop there. Is there anything else that lacks coherence? Perhaps…..
The authors are defending their version of the hypothesis. They claim that people that object to the hypothesis are presenting a variety of logically incoherent critiques of the hypothesis. What they really mean is that the critiques when viewed together do not make sense. At a glance this is a sensible position but it is actually quite irrelevant.
An hypothesis itself must be coherent and it must pass all tests. Any single failed test makes the hypothesis wrong. If you present 10 valid tests of the hypothesis, and the hypothesis fails one test, do you then need to look at all of the tests as a whole to see if they are coherent to confirm a failed hypothesis? Of course not. One failed test is all you needed. Yet that is exactly the premise of the paper.
So we have now established that the underpinning premise is wrong and we have established that the lack of coherence in the critiques of the defended hypothesis is not relevant either.
It’s also an appeal to ignorance, which is a fallacy. Their ignorance. The fact that they burry their heads in the sand and do not want to find about a coherent alternate view is not an evidence for absence, but an evidence for their ignorance. As far as I’m concerned, the alternate view was already presented by Lorenz. There are a lot of his papers here: http://eaps4.mit.edu/research/Lorenz/publications.htm
Just as an example, this one: “Chaos, spontaneous climatic variations and detection of the greenhouse effect” contains some ‘hints’ to a very coherent alternate worldview.
So here’s another shot at my Q/A = U * dT explaining the atmospheric dT.
The irradiance of the photosphere at average, perihelion (closest) and aphelion (farthest) are 1,368, 1,413, and 1,323 W/m^2. The S-B BB temperature that applies to each of these is: 394.1, 397.3 and 390.8 K. The surface temperature is 288 K. The conductivity incoming or outgoing is the same, 0.024. The distance is the same, 100 km. So incoming and outgoing should balance. The surface temp is adjusted to make them balance, a 6.5 C difference from solstice to solstice.
Voila!
5.6700E-08
Average/perihelion/aphelion 1,368.0………..1,413.0………….1,323.0…………Diff
Incoming ToA T S-B BB………..394.12 K 397.3 K 390.84 K 6.48
Surface, In & Out………………….288.00 K 290.20 K 287.00 K
Out of ToA……………………………-90.00 C -90.00 C -90.00 C
………………………………………….183.00 K 183.00 K 183.00 K
Distance………………………………..100 km 100 km……………100 km
k………………………………………….0.024 0.024 0.024
Q/A In: k * L * dT…………………..254.68 W/m^2 257.09 W/m^2 249.21 W/m^2
k………………………………………….0.024 0.024 0.024
Q/A Out: k * L *dT…………………252.00 W/m^2 257.28 W/m^2 249.60 W/m^2
Why not fight on the basis of scientific method, theories must be predictive and repeatable by others, theories survive by withstanding criticism. Preventing opposing viewpoints denies that proof.
But this is not a scientific war, it is a political war and Political Correctness, of which climate change is a subset, is just another tool in the kit of those who want to take ALL our rights. Fighting the climate war is just a distraction, we need to find the kingpins identify them and make them stop.
Consider Mark Steyn. Here is a video of a speech he did recently in Australia, it gives us a taste of just how bad the world is getting. Well put, Mark!
But he says if we fight back as hard as the left is fighting, we can win!
https://youtu.be/_hCtuGNRN1U